


As Many Times

by ancientroots



Series: At Points In Time [2]
Category: Kuroko no Basuke | Kuroko's Basketball
Genre: M/M, Will be difficult to understand without reading Part One
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-30
Updated: 2015-12-30
Packaged: 2018-05-10 10:19:59
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Underage
Chapters: 1
Words: 28,188
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5581975
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ancientroots/pseuds/ancientroots
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A month away from his final Inter-High, Nijimura Shuzo's problems with his family reach a new low. At the same time, events lead Akashi Seijuro to contemplate the meaning of independence and dependence.</p><p> </p><p>Seijuro could not allow him to misunderstand. “I do not mean to insult you –”</p><p>“The way you say it,” Shuzo snapped. “It’s like you don’t expect anything. You don’t expect anything from me.”</p>
            </blockquote>





	As Many Times

**Author's Note:**

> Again, reference is made to: Akashi and Other Animals by half_sleeping.
> 
> Also, this work would be difficult to understand without reading the first one in the series: At The End.

**AS MANY TIMES**

 

It was a long walk, and a short walk. Toru wasn’t paying much attention, really. He remembered passing through the Rakuzan gates, black high steel, and making his way across the campus to the sports halls. At some point, he must have stopped to ask for directions – and someone must have asked him what he, a student in the uniform of another school, was doing at Rakuzan – but if he did, or if someone did, Toru didn’t quite recall. His blood was pumping in his head; his breath was short and sharp; and he was _angry_. Angry enough that it hurt.

 

The white-painted doors of the sports hall opened easily beneath his hand. In the wide, brightly-lit space of the basketball courts in front of him, unknown people in jerseys and T-shirts were running from one side of the court to another.

 

Toru scanned the hair, the faces. Alighted on spiky black hair and a dark expression. He stalked across the court toward their owner.

 

The other players on the court paused in their drills to stare.

 

Toru wasn’t paying attention.

 

His target, sensing the change in the atmosphere, stopped halfway through his own drill. Toru was almost on top of him. Isamu’s face froze.

 

Toru drove his fist into his jaw.

 

Isamu’s neck snapped.

 

And again.

 

And again.

 

Toru couldn’t think. At some point, he thought he had also stopped breathing.

 

Isamu seized his wrist. Gripped it hard enough to bruise. “Toru,” he rasped. His nose was bleeding. Toru had made it bleed.

 

Toru raised his other fist.

 

“Sekiguchi!” someone else said, sharply.

 

The voice was familiar; the command in it even more so. Toru stopped automatically. Looked up.

 

Nijimura Shuzo was standing at the open doorway to the sports hall, the same doorway through which Toru himself had just come. There was a clipboard in his hand. His dark grey eyes swept from Toru to Isamu and back. “Get off Yamada.”

 

Another head ducked into the doorway. Scarlet in the bright lights of the hall. Heterochromatic eyes. Akashi Seijuro.

 

Toru’s muscles seized up. Isamu shoved him off. “What the fuck,” he bit out.

 

Toru got slowly to his feet. “What the fuck,” he repeated. “ _What the fuck_. You know what the fuck, you sick bastard.”

 

“I don't,” Isamu said. “You’re crazy, you know that. Just –” his gaze slid away. “Really crazy.”

 

Toru laughed. It fell awkwardly, incongruously in the whisper-heavy quiet around them. “Are you kidding me? I’m crazy. I’m the one whose –”

 

A hand clamped down on his shoulder. Nijimura. “Sekiguchi, let’s go.”

 

Toru didn’t want to go. He wanted to punch Isamu’s face again. Punch that uneasy expression black and blue and bleeding. It hurt; this anger inside him. The spaces inside his chest, in his throat were thick with it. Wet and damp.

 

He wouldn’t give Isamu – Yamada the satisfaction.

 

Akashi said, politely, as he and Nijimura passed him on the way out of the doors, “Toru. It has been a while.”

 

First names. What the actual –

 

Nijimura’s grip tightened. “We’ll be outside.”

 

“Of course,” Akashi said.

 

The gaze that passed between the former captains was one that Toru couldn’t read. But he could feel the spike in tension. Clean-limbed, matter-of-fact, full of intent.

 

Nijimura snorted. “Go do your thing.”

 

Akashi walked away from them. Speaking orders in cool, calm tones.

 

Toru found himself steered down the hallway outside. A left turn. A right. A corner where two drinks machines were backed against the wall. A long bench sat beside them, steel and unimposing. The tennis courts were visible in the distance.

 

“Sit,” Nijimura said.

 

The drinks machine clanged and clattered.

 

Toru lifted his head to the ceiling. His eyes were watering. The heat, dust – who the hell was he kidding?

 

A cold can of green tea was pressed into his hand.

 

Nijimura’s gaze was cool, non-judgmental.

 

Toru wiped the back of his fingers across his eyes. “You haven’t changed much, have you? Since Teiko.”

 

“That a compliment?”

 

“How’s your dad?”

 

Shortly, “Dead.”

 

Toru looked away. “I’m sorry.”

 

“Nothing to do with you.”

 

A pause. Toru’s fingers worked at the tab on top of the can. It sprung open.

 

A weight settled on the bench next to him. “Not that I don’t want to punch Yamada in the face myself, all day, every day, but –”

 

They had been teammates in middle school. That was two years ago. Even then, they hadn’t been all that close. Teiko’s first string, even before the Generation of Miracles arrived, had been focused on winning. Teamwork came into that, but no matter what all those sports anime liked to say, friendship and teamwork weren’t always the same thing. And Nijimura Shuzo was a hard person to get to know. Easy enough to like – the matter-of-fact air of blunt honesty and worked-for talent helped with that. But aloof. A commander more than a friend.

 

It wasn’t as if Toru had expected anything different, after a while. At Teiko, everyone was out for themselves. Akashi and those other brats took it up a whole new level, obviously. But it wasn’t as if they’d invented the philosophy.

 

Toru had owed Nijimura teamwork. Politeness. A certain amount of camaraderie. He didn’t owe him the truth.

 

And so, he had no idea why he said, less calmly, less indifferently, than he would have liked, “He’s my boyfriend.”

 

“Yamada,” Nijimura said. Flat, like stones burning in the summer sun.

 

It was spring.

 

“He’s not that bad,” Toru said, automatic. None of his friends liked Isamu either.

 

A beat. Nijimura’s foot shifted on the concrete floor. A scuffed but high-quality basketball shoe.

 

In the distance, the smacking of tennis balls remained a steady, low sound.

 

“I thought he wasn’t,” Toru said. The shadows on the ground were the most fascinating thing he had seen since – fuck. His voice broke, a confession. “We had sex last week. He videotaped it. I – don’t.”

 

Nijimura’s fingers, resting loosely on his the knees of his dark blue basketball shorts, tightened. White-knuckled.

 

Toru dropped his face into his hands.

 

The sun was bright; its colours expanded and faded behind his eyelids.

 

 

 

Seijuro sat at his desk in his room, watching Shuzo pace the floor, movements short and abrupt.

 

“I’m going to kill that bastard Yamada,” his vice-captain snapped.

 

“Toru requested that you not intervene,” Seijuro observed.

 

Shuzo turned mid-step, pointed at Seijuro. “And that. That’s just creepy when you do it to people who aren’t your teammates. Do you seriously call even complete strangers by their first names?”

 

“We were teammates,” Seijuro said.

 

“In middle school! And – I give up. Sekiguchi has a week. A fucking week. And then I’m going to make Yamada’s face cave in.” He stalked over to the bed, flopped on the sheets. As he did so, his grey shirt rode up, exposed pale skin and lean muscle.

 

Seijuro controlled his tone. “I assumed your days of delinquency were over.”

 

Shuzo crossed his arms behind his head. Stared up at the ceiling.

 

The peculiar tension that had been between them for a week now had returned. Seijuro suppressed a sigh. Turned his chair back to his desk.

 

Shuzo said, “The money came through.”

 

“Your father’s will,” Seijuro said, glancing at him.

 

“Yeah.” A pause. “It’s a lot. Left just to me. Not to the brats, or Kaa-san, or Oji-san, and Oba-san. I don’t get it.”

 

Seijuro had never met Shuzo’s father. Only his mother, on the day that Shuzo and the other third-years at Teiko formally departed from the basketball team.

 

Shuzo’s mouth opened, as if to speak again. And then it pressed into a thin line.

 

“You have considered my proposal,” Seijuro said, when it became clear that Shuzo had once again opted for silence on the subject of his family.

 

“The proposal where I meet your dad and he rejects me on the basis of my gender or accomplishments, take your pick?” Shuzo said, dryly. “Added to the fact we’ve only been together for two months –”

 

Irritation spiked. Shuzo’s insecurity, or Seijuro’s own, Seijuro refused to contemplate. “We will be in Tokyo nonetheless. And you will not be meeting my father as my partner.” He ignored Shuzo’s half-smile at the choice of words. “You will be meeting him as my senpai and former captain.”

 

“Senpai and former captain,” Shuzo repeated.

 

Seijuro heard the irony in the tone. Disliked it. He did not set his pen down on his desk with unnecessary force. “We discussed this matter yesterday, Shuzo. As you have considered it, and still have no desire to attend my father’s birthday event, we will leave the subject aside. Now, I have a practice match with Seirin to plan. As vice-captain, you may assist me. Or you may leave.”

 

The clear dismissal was practiced to incite anger or force submission.

 

Shuzo sat up. His hands braced in Seijuro’s now-mussed sheets as he swung his feet off, rested them on the floor. His gaze was cool and grey. The irony that had been in his tone, the hint of uncertainty – suppressed behind a metal gate. “Hey, wait a minute. I didn’t say no.”

 

Seijuro turned to fully face him.

 

Their feet cast shadows across the concrete. Outside, the corridor of the scholarship students’ floor was quiet. Kotaro and Eikichi would be up in moments to report on Atsushi’s feeding, Tetsuya’s state of life, and Daiki’s catch of rats that day. Reo would bring Ryota back from the girls’ dorm, where he had been popular of late. Chihiro was likely reading in his room. His latest light novel. And Shintaro was under Seijuro’s bed, as he always was, eating lettuce.

 

All was accounted for.

 

But Shuzo. Who, since he had been visited by his aunt the week before, had been acting oddly jumpy. On edge.

 

He would tell Seijuro nothing.

 

“Of course I’ll come,” Shuzo said, finally. “Shoudn’t have given you a hard time about it in the first place. Sorry, Sei.”

 

Shuzo could look after himself. As could Seijuro. Non-interference was in their agreement with each other. A mutual respect. Two months ago, Shuzo had opened up to him about his family only because Seijuro had forced him into an untenable situation. Seijuro himself had only told Shuzo the vague outline of what he needed – deserved – to know as the target of Seijuro’s unseemly outburst.

 

The windows were open. Shuzo liked to open them, despite the fact that it was still late spring and cold breezes were not out of the norm.

 

Late spring. April. Almost May. One more month, and then it would be the Inter-High. The last game that Seijuro’s current line-up would play. Shuzo, Reo, Eikichi, Kotaro, and Chihiro were all third-years; they would retire after the summer. Seijuro already had potential replacements in mind. No one as promising as the Generation of Miracles or even the Uncrowned Kings. But talented. Good enough to ensure Rakuzan’s continued victory.

 

One more competition. After that, half a year.

 

Seijuro would be alone.

 

That last day of basketball practice at Teiko. He, Daiki, Atsushi, Shintaro, and Ryota had stood together in the centre of the empty court. A final ending, to something that had already been ending for a long time.

 

A year before that – the afternoon of the seniors’ retirement ceremony from the basketball club. Nijimura-san, Sekiguchi Toru, Kubota Masaya, others whose names Seijuro had no need to remember. Nijimura-san had flicked Seijuro on the forehead, once, and said that he was sure that Captain Akashi would have everything in hand.

 

In that moment, Seijuro wondered if he had resented Nijimura-san – resented Shuzo. For speaking with that certainty in his voice, a certainty shot through with a complicated need. Nijimura-san, Shuzo, had needed Seijuro to have everything in hand. He had needed Seijuro to be fine.

 

On that day, Shuzo must already have known that he would leave. Go to America for his father’s treatment, a treatment that would eventually fail. Perhaps, even then, he had sensed, in the same instinctive way he had known Seijuro’s talent even as a first-year – recommended him for the vice-captaincy – that when he returned, it would be to something broken.

 

Shuzo could look after himself. Nonetheless, Seijuro thought, calm and measured, perhaps it was time to test if he had miscalculated. In beginning this relationship that was already slated to end.

 

He had initially wanted Shuzo to attend his father’s birthday celebration for simpler reasons. The inevitable boredom. The knowledge that it would be beneficial to Shuzo to escape his home environment for an afternoon and an evening. The childish – Seijuro gripped the edge of the desk, stood up from his chair – desire to see his partner over the long weekend before Rakuzan’s training camp.

 

But other than those things. It would be an opportunity.

 

“Sei,” Shuzo said. A note of surprise in his voice.

 

Seijuro looked down at him. The natural way of things.

 

The surprise hardened into half-worry, half-irritation. “What are you doing?”

 

“You will visit my home,” Seijuro said.

 

“If that’s where the party will be,” Shuzo said.

 

“I will visit yours as well,” Seijuro said. A stipulation.

 

“What.” Shuzo’s shoulders tensed. He moved, as if to get up, but the space between them was too narrow for him to stand. The idea aborted, he looked up at Seijuro, back straight and gaze stormy. “This isn’t some kind of exchange.”

 

Seijuro met the grey eyes – paler than usual at this angle, with the light from the fluorescent lamp overhead shining directly down. “We will not have time, during my father’s event, to finalise the plans for the training camp.”

 

“We can finalise them now.”

 

“There will be new things to consider at the weekend.”

 

“Like what,” Shuzo bit out.

 

Seijuro should cease. The way Shuzo was holding himself, sharp iron – it was unhappy, cornered.

 

Shuzo had not looked like this when he asked Seijuro to take over the captaincy. He had not looked like this when he and the other third-years left the Teiko gym for the final time.

 

Seijuro was fully capable of being responsible for himself. His own victories, his own mistakes. Teiko’s triumphs had been triumphs he engineered. The slow, inward collapse of the Generation of Miracles had been his failure. As was Yamada Isamu’s unwise course of action the previous summer – that had resulted in Chihiro’s injury and Seijuro’s humiliation. These things were his failures alone.

 

When Shuzo left again, it would not be a failure. It would not be anything. Simply something that had come about in the course of time. Inevitability. Whatever Nijimura Shuzo was, he was not irreplaceable. He had not measured up to the Generation of Miracles. He had valued his ill father over his captaincy and the opportunity to lead Teiko to victory.

 

Low, “Sei –”

 

Presumptuous. Seijuro contained his contempt – ignored the glass edge to it that was ignorant of whether that contempt was directed at Shuzo or at himself. “You will attend my father’s event. And I will visit your home to discuss the training camp.”

 

A ruling. Shuzo’s face was stone.

 

Seijuro walked to the door. Stood there.

 

“And now you’re kicking me out,” Shuzo observed. Got up, the movement easy, as if he wasn’t seething. As if Seijuro couldn’t read the emotion in the absence of emotion in his voice. “I’ll go.”

 

Shuzo opened the door himself, fingers deliberately relaxed on the knob. His left hand was shoved deep inside the pocket of his shorts. “We’re not done.”

 

Seijuro had no need to answer.

 

Shuzo laughed. Short. “See you tomorrow, Sei.”

 

 

 

“Shuzo-kun,” Mibuchi said, delicately, during cool-down stretches on the final day before the weekend and Golden Week. “Is everything all right with Sei-chan?”

 

The first string were the last to finish, as always. The courts were more or less deserted, but for the first-year students in the white jerseys of the second and third strings. They were sweeping up the gym, putting away the basketballs, and all around doing those things that Sei had probably managed to skip because he was captain and captains could not be seen doing first-year chores.

 

“What makes you think,” Shuzo said, picking himself up off the floor, “that anything’s wrong with Sei?”

 

Mayuzumi snorted from where he was bending over his outstretched legs, fingers touching his toes with a flexible ease. “He was being way too absolute today. Even for him.”

 

Hayama took his bottle from his mouth long enough to say – and choke at the same time – “Yeah, did you see –”

 

Mibuchi said, patiently, “Swallow, Kotaro.”

 

“ – that first-year kid’s _face_ when he challenged Akashi to a one-on-one and Akashi said ‘You are too weak’, and walked away from him?”

 

Nebuya loomed above them, hands linked together and straining toward the ceiling. “Mochida Akira.”

 

“So that was his name,” Kotaro said. “Mochida. Mochida. Doesn’t ring a bell. But he really seemed like he had a bone to pick with our captain.”

 

“He’s a first-year,” Shuzo said.

 

Mayuzumi’s tone was dark. “It’s Akashi Seijuro. Shouldn’t rule it out.”

 

Shuzo had stopped attempting to understand Mayuzumi’s and Akashi’s relationship a long time ago. He ran a hand over his scalp. Sweat clung to his fingers. “I’m heading to the showers.”

 

“If you run into Sei-chan –” Mibuchi began.

 

Sei moved quiet as a cat. But his presence was impossible to overlook.

 

Mibuchi’s mouth snapped shut.

 

Sei’s skin was damp, fresh-looking. The ends of his bright red hair dripped clean water. He had changed into the white Rakuzan team jacket with its blue-and-white striped collar and cuffs. He was standing very still.

 

Hayama swallowed.

 

“There was something you wished Shuzo to convey to me, Reo.”

 

“No, Sei-chan,” Mibuchi said, immediately. “There wasn’t anything – important.”

 

“Nothing important,” Sei said.

 

The little tableau playing in front of him was spiking a sharp, hard irritation deep in Shuzo’s gut. And the usual accompanying amusement – Sei was Sei, after all – it wasn’t making its appearance.

 

Shuzo moved to leave. Hit the showers, then call Tatsuya about their meeting this weekend. Pack.

 

Sei said, without inflection, “Shuzo.”

 

His name in Akashi’s mouth could be anything from affectionate to bland – in that way that Shuzo knew damn well was meant to be contemptuous – to heavy and warm with arousal.

 

Shuzo shut his eyes, briefly. This really wasn’t the time to be thinking – “Sei,” he said, more curtly than he probably should have.

 

Mayuzumi came out of his stretch and crossed his legs. His face was blank.

 

Nebuya’s arms dropped to his sides. Wood blocks of awkward tension.

 

Akashi’s gaze was the kind that made people submit. Wide, red.

 

Shuzo had let himself be ordered out of his boyfriend’s room once already. Mostly because something had seemed off about Sei. An edged apprehension.

 

But now he set his jaw.

 

Sei said, “My father’s event will be at noon on Sunday. I will come with a driver. Please be dressed appropriately. We will make arrangements for the second visit when we meet.”

 

Dressed appropriately. What the fuck did that mean? Shuzo refused to have to ask. “We haven’t talked about that yet.”

 

“It is not a matter for discussion.”

 

Akashi Seijuro and Shuzo’s Oba-san had virtually nothing in common. Oba-san was a corporate lawyer with a soft spot for pro bono cases. She and Oji-san had never been able to have children, and so, out of genuine love and perhaps a sense of loss, she had showered her younger brother’s sons and daughter with gifts from the moment of their birth. As with his parents, Shuzo had always known, in the half-conscious, entitled way of the young that he had been lucky in his family and his childhood.

 

Oba-san had loved her younger brother. Wanted him to live. She had been the one to pay for the expensive treatment in America, helped out with the money needed for Shuzo’s family to move there. She had visited as often as she could, with her busy career and commitments in Japan.

 

On the nights when Shuzo was unable to sleep and found himself thinking about it – found himself reliving the day and night he had spent thinking about how to make the decision that his father had left up to him – he had thought this: since the divorce, Tou-san and Kaa-san had been barely able to stand being in the same room. Tou-san had known what kind of decision Oba-san would make. Oji-san was an outsider. And Kou and Sachi were too young, only thirteen at the time.

 

Who, then, had that left.

 

By process of elimination – only Shuzo.

 

Oba-san, the executor of her brother’s will, had come to explain the money to Shuzo. Handed over a bank book. The information that she and Kaa-san had set up a trust for him, for which he was a co-trustee, and that he would have full control of the money when he came of age. Her expression the entire time had been careful, neutral.

 

Shuzo had wanted to ask her, in a spike of childish bitterness, if this sum – this amount of cash to him and to nobody else – was some kind of compensation. For Tou-san’s cold, clear measurement of his family members’ ability to make the choice that he would have wanted – the process of elimination that had ensured Shuzo would decide if he lived or died.

 

But Shuzo had grown up; or at least he wanted to think that he had. He said, instead, just as careful, as neutral, as his aunt, “Couldn’t I give some of this to Kou or Sachi? Or Kaa-san, if she’ll take it.”

 

For a moment, Oba-san’s face changed. A shift Shuzo couldn’t read. “I don’t think your mother will take it, Shuu-kun. And as for Kou-kun and Sach-chan. Have you considered what you will be doing for university?”

 

The empty classroom Shuzo’s homeroom teacher had allowed them to use for this conversation was awash with late afternoon light, red as fire and the colour of Sei’s hair. The shadows – even those were appropriate. The slight darkness in the dip of Sei’s collarbones, wet with sweat in the aftermath of a practice game; the outline of the flat planes of his chest when he changed in the locker room. All the things that Shuzo should not be thinking about right now – and shit.

 

Oba-san’s mouth twisted. Halfway between amusement and that still unreadable emotion. “Please focus, Shuu-kun. I don’t agree with your mother’s choice of action. Cutting a child completely off after high school – and for such a – ” she paused, oblivious to Shuzo’s own expression, “ – I was unhappy with your decision. But you are still my nephew, and I –’

 

“What,” Shuzo said. At some point as his aunt was speaking, something had happened to his ears. He could feel the blood moving in them. Hear the sound of his breathing, regular, even, stunned.

 

His aunt blinked at him. “Shuu-kun.”

 

“What do you mean,” he said.  “Kaa-san’s –”

 

A classroom. A basketball court.

 

Oba-san. Akashi Seijuro.

 

The two things weren’t related at all.

 

Sei’s hair was darker when damp from the shower like this. Shuzo had run his fingers through it once, a week or two ago, when Sei had gotten it in his head to kiss Shuzo up against his locker after the others had gone. The metal had been spring-cold; the locker handle had dug into Shuzo’s back; but he had seen no reason to complain. Sei’s mouth was warm. He let Shuzo press his tongue into the closed, sharp heat of it. Taste tofu soup, bitter tea, and something sweet-sharp that was uniquely Sei.

 

“Shuzo-kun,” Mibuchi said. Always with the best grasp of the atmosphere.

 

It wasn’t a matter for discussion, Sei had said.

 

Shuzo lost his temper. “Screw you, Akashi,” he bit out. “My captain has no business being in my house. My kouhai should just shut up. And if my boyfriend has got some sort of sick controlling kink –”

 

Hayama made an incoherent noise.

 

“ – he can fuck the hell off.”

 

If nothing else, he had managed to keep control over his volume. The silence – it was limited to the immediate circle of space around him, Sei, and the other four. 

 

That didn’t make it reverberate any less. Clang – with the rising, incandescent fury in Sei’s face.

 

Mayuzumi got up from the floor. “I’m leaving.”

 

At once, the emotion in the dark red gaze blanked. Sheets of thick heavy metal slamming into place. “There will be no need for that, Chihiro. Finish your stretches. Shuzo and I have nothing more to say to each other.”

 

Shuzo’s ribs twisted. Slow and ugly. The flash of temper was cooling into something harder, more unforgiving.

 

The things he had said – and in front of Mibuchi and the rest – he should have grown out of this childish, petty acting out. “Sei,” he said. His hand lifted, despite himself. A half-gesture.

 

“I have business to attend to at this point in time.” Cutting.

 

That tone of voice. An emperor to a lowly peasant. Shuzo bit his tongue. Suppressed a second, undeserved, flash of anger. His hand dropped back to his side. He refused to look away.

 

Sei didn't look away either. His gaze was cold and bland. When he spoke, it was to the other Rakuzan team members. “I will see you all at the training camp on Tuesday. Please be prompt.” And then he turned, not more sharply than usual, left the way he had come.  Unwillingly, Shuzo followed his boyfriend’s footsteps across the floor of the hall. Watched the hall doors open and shut.

 

Mayuzumi snorted. Said to no one in particular. “Like a fucking anime.”

 

 

 

The train to Tokyo was loud that night. Packed with Rakuzan students going home for the week-long vacation. Shuzo stuck his earphones in his ears and ignored a few of his classmates’ attempts to engage him in conversation. 

 

And then someone shoved his way into the seat next to him, pulled the earphones out.

 

“Nijimura,” Yamada said, flat. His shoulders were hunched in his high-collared black jacket. Gakuran-style. Someone had told him what the cool kids wore.

 

Shuzo didn’t react.

 

More forcefully. “I know you can hear me, bastard.”

 

The cabin chattered and laughed all around them. The air was heavy, too warm and too close. Shuzo had never much liked spaces with too many people in them. Back in middle school, in the first year of his captaincy, when the sports reporters had pressed in on him to fire off questions about Teiko’s team, he had snapped. Given curt, sharp answers; forcibly removed a camera from his vice-captain’s – not Akashi – face. And been chewed out by the coach afterwards.

 

A second reminder in the same day. Of how short a fuse he had.

 

He held out his hand, palm up. “Earphones, now.”

 

Yamada’s eyes were a dark green; Shuzo hadn’t gotten close enough to care before. “Toru talked to you. I want to know what he said.”

 

“Let me think of a reason to tell you,” Shuzo said. “I don’t have one, you sick fuck.”

 

A nasty smile. “Should’ve known you would have something against me. Your precious little captain.”

 

Akashi Seijuro would handle himself. Had made that clear several times over. Especially when it came to Yamada. Sei wouldn’t like it if Shuzo socked this guy in the face and made his nose bleed. More than likely, Shuzo thought with a dark, measured detachment, Sei would be furious.

 

He spoke, instead. Simply. “Our second-year captain ankle-broke you in five seconds this afternoon.”

 

The smile faltered. Yamada’s gaze flickered down and to the left. Impotent. “What did Toru say to you.”

 

Comparisons with Shuzo’s own family seemed to be on the menu of the day.

 

The tone in Yamada’s voice. The choice of words.

 

In those final months before the divorce, Tou-san’s and Kaa-san’s favourite phrase had been ‘What did your father say to you’. ‘What did your mother say to you’. As if they didn’t live in the same bloody house when Tou-san wasn’t in the same hospital. As if when Tou-san was, Kaa-san didn’t go visit him every day of the week.

 

Anger took up a lot of energy.

 

Shuzo plucked his earphones from Yamada’s hand. Turned back to the window. The passing lights outside. They looked like ghosts, half-shadows, fading into the sharper, harder reflections cast onto the glass panes by the cabin’s fluorescent lamps.

 

“You know,” Yamada said, voice low with frustration. “It’s not just that brat Akashi. No one on the team likes you either. Outside of the stupid-ass _Uncrowned Kings_ and that freak Mayuzumi. Came halfway through second year and took a first-string spot and the vice-captaincy straight off the bat? Got to be fucking kidding.”

 

“I’ve been on the first string for months,” Shuzo observed. “Haven’t been jumped in a lonely corridor or shouted at in the rain. Yet.”

 

“You think I’m joking.”

 

“I don’t think about you, Yamada.”

 

A bang. Yamada, slapping his fist into the back of the seat in front of them. The poor bastard sitting in it leaned around the edge, mouth opening to snap. Shuzo recognized him. A second-stringer on the team. Miyamoto. Second-year. Sei was thinking of him as a replacement for the third-year starters when they left.

 

Yamada fixed the kid with a look.

 

Miyamoto paled, withdrew with a speed Shuzo would have applauded if it had come about under different circumstances.

 

“Just watch yourself, Nijimura,” Yamada said, getting up. Probably going for sharp and dramatic, but the lack of space between the chairs tripped him up. He stumbled out into the narrow lane running through the cabin.

 

Shuzo knew an empty threat when he heard one. Yamada had been running out of steam for weeks. He sized the bastard up. Then looked away. An effective dismissal. He had used it on highly-strung teammates in the past. People at Teiko or Rakuzan who protested the Generation of Miracles’s too-rapid rise up the ranks. A first-year’s appointment as vice-captain at Teiko, as captain at Rakuzan. A backbench filled with third-years who had worked hard for the right to be the first to step into the court. Shuzo put his earphones back in. Shut his eyes.

 

When Yamada had gone, finally, with a muttered curse and a dumb if well-aimed kick at the side of his vacated seat, Shuzo put his hand in the pocket of his grey hoodie. Pulled out his phone and dialled Tatsuya’s number.

 

It went to ring-tone. Tatsuya tended to sleep on the train. And the trip from Akita to Tokyo was a long one. He wouldn’t be answering calls for a few hours yet.

 

Sei’s was the second number on speed-dial.

 

Shuzo let his finger hover over the key on his phone for a moment. Two. And then put the device back in his pocket.

 

 

 

Seijuro’s father had said, many months ago when he came to see his son in the hospital after Yamada Isamu’s ill-considered if successful attack, “If you’re going to start something, Seijuro, you should finish it.”

 

“Father,” Seijuro remembered saying. An acknowledgement or something else, he wasn’t sure. He had been half-awake; his father had travelled in the night to see him. The realization was both comforting and shot through with a thin line of apprehension. Father had not done such a thing since Seijuro was five years old and came to his parents’ bedroom in the night with a high fever. At that time, Mother had been alive. Many things had been different when Seijuro’s mother was alive.

 

His father’s hair was peppered with grey. His face was half-cast in shadow from the light in the hall. Seijuro, Mother liked to say, had inherited the colour of his hair from her side of the family. But the soft-coarse feel of it, the way it spiked slightly at the edges – that he had inherited from his father. As Mother said this, she would comb her fingers over Seijuro’s scalp, smile in the soft but iron way she reserved for Seijuro’s father.

 

The pillow was thin against Seijuro’s back. He could feel the bars of the hospital bed digging into his skin. His neck ached. Isamu had punched him very hard in the face.

 

He felt his hand lift, partly instinctive; the fingers dig into his neck where the ache was located. The pain was sharp. Sudden. At the same moment, it brought to mind another set of fingers – Isamu’s – pressing warm against his shoulder the day before, as Isamu said, “I like you, Akashi. Thought you might want to know.”

 

Isamu had classic good looks – black hair, pale skin – this Seijuro knew with a flat detachment. Why Seijuro had allowed him to lay a hand on his person – that was another matter. Seijuro did not permit touch easily.

 

But. Perhaps. He was fifteen years old. Except for Reo, the other players on the team were hostile. Isamu was a passably adequate player.

 

Seijuro had let his guard down. That he had done so – it was intolerable. 

 

He dropped his hand from his neck, forced it to lie flat on the bedsheets.

 

“Be careful,” Father said, brusquely. And then, “I expect you to recover well, Seijuro. I will return to Tokyo tomorrow.”

 

The corridor outside was very bright. Seijuro’s room, relatively dark.

 

“And keep in mind what I said. You are Akashi Seijuro. You will finish what you have started. A child acted against you out of petty jealousy. You will put him in his place. Do not let me hear that you have decided to quit basketball beccause of such a minor matter.”

 

Anger flashed cold and dark. “I had no intention of doing so, Father.”

 

A moment of quiet. Father’s mouth was a thin line. “That is well then. One more thing, before you resume your rest. That boy who came to your aid.”

 

“Chihiro,” Seijuro said.

 

“He is a friend of yours.”

 

Give up basketball because of Yamada Isamu - the sheer incredulity of it. The inexcusable – Seijuro drew himself up in bed. Ignored the second sharp stab of pain the movement brought. “A valued teammate.”

 

His father’s shadow was already receding toward the doorway. He had always held little interest in Seijuro’s opinions. It was as if his son had not spoken. “As I told you when you were a child. Choose your friends carefully. Your wife, as well, when the time comes. Our life – winning – is not one that all are suited for. Your friends will leave you. Your wife.”

 

It could not pass. Not this. “Mother was sick.”

 

A hand on the doorknob. “And if she had become well, I am sure our marriage would not have lasted much longer. You were young; you cannot be expected to remember.”

 

“Mother – ” The rise in tone; Seijuro clamped down on it. His chest felt shallow, tight. What to complete the sentence? He could hardly say: Mother loved us.

 

“Your mother and I loved each other very much.” An admission that stunned. Delivered as if it were a remark on the price of Akashi Corporation’s stock. His father twisted the knob. The door opened wider.

 

Footsteps sounded outside. Father fell quiet. Exchanged a polite greeting with whoever it was – a nurse, or a doctor.

 

And then he turned his head, looked back at Seijuro. His eyes were a deep, flat brown. “But we lived very separate lives. It was what we thought best. We met in university. Your mother married me, not my family or my company. Similarly, I had little interest in her mother and brothers. Low, grasping people. She thought so too. Why she chose to continue to associate with them –” A twitch of muscle in the jaw. “Nonetheless. We should have known better. To live separately, as completely as we sought to, is not as simple as it seems. It may be obvious, but such a state of being in a relationship entails a significant amount of – ” a pause, “ – isolation. Chosen isolation, but still isolation. And one that we had not expected of each other. It bred feelings – irrational feelings. Resentment. Abandonment.”

 

“You are saying that Mother abandoned you.”

 

“I am saying,” Father corrected, “that at the time your mother became sick, we were beginning to find it inordinately easy, desirable even, to abandon each other.”

 

It was difficult to breathe. Childishly so. Unforgivably so. Seijuro was himself. Akashi Seijuro did not need to believe that his parents had loved one another. 

 

“I see,” Seijuro allowed himself to say. Cooler than he had intended.

 

He found that his hands had, despite himself, pressed deep into the bedsheets. Not fisting, or gripping. Palms flat, fingers splayed.

 

His father’s gaze was implacable. “You will take my advice.”

 

A statement. Measured. “Stay with my dying spouse for duty and not affection. I will consider it.”

 

“It was not so clear-cut as that,” his father observed.

 

“It was not,” Seijuro said.

 

“You will be careful in choosing your friends. Expect of them only what should be expected. In that way you will avoid resentment.”

 

“I am,” Seijuro said, “always careful in choosing my friends.”

 

A dry smile. That, Seijuro had not inherited.

 

His father stepped out of the room. Closed the door behind him.

 

Seijuro blinked into the darkness. Raised his hands, slowly, to his face. The morphine – his injuries – were overwhelming him. He could feel tears in his eyes. Wet and warm. The shallow tightness of his chest had yet to fade.

 

He would rest. Recover.

 

When he had done so, he would visit Chihiro.

 

Yamada Isamu would regret his insolence. Rakuzan would win the Winter Cup. And Seijuro would prove to his father – he did not know what he would prove to his father. Just. First, he needed to get himself under control.

 

 

 

“What are you thinking about?” Chihiro said, warily. He had landed a seat opposite Akashi on the train. Mibuchi, angling to make sure the first-string – the important bits of the first string anyway – had proper bonding time. The only person he hadn’t been able to rope into sitting in the same cabin, the same couple of seats, had been Nijimura, who had disappeared off somewhere after practice in the afternoon and not been seen since. The bastard.

 

Akashi had been looking at the same page of his thinly bound novel for a while. Almost a full minute. Chihiro knew – and didn’t want to know – that it didn't take the great Akashi Seijuro a minute to read a single page of a novel that could fit that easily into the palm of his hand.

 

Red-gold eyes lifted to Chihiro’s face. Amused. With an added layer of icy metal that Chihiro knew could be put down to that drama with Nijimura earlier.

 

Fuck, things had only gotten more complicated after they started screwing.

 

Were they even screwing?

 

Chihiro’s fingers tightened around the spine of his manga. He needed to scorch his brain. Bloody scorch it.

 

“It’s not like you to be interested in my doings, Chihiro,” Akashi said.

 

Chihiro bit out, “I’m not.”

 

An iron smile. But softer than Chihiro would have expected. Disconcerting. Akashi was always screwing with people’s heads.

 

The book snapped shut. Akashi set it down on the empty seat next to him. Hayama, gone to yak into the ear of one of his classmates. No one else – barring Mibuchi and Nebuya, who were asleep; and Chihiro, who couldn’t be paid enough to sit next to their captain – had dared to take it.

 

“I was thinking,” Akashi said, distant, “of a conversation I had once with my father.”

 

“Your father.”

 

“His birthday is on Sunday. There will be a celebration.”

 

Pieces slotted into place. Chihiro scowled. He didn’t want to know. But his mouth, always faster than his brain, and driven more by curiosity than self-preservation. “That thing – Nijimura’s going, isn’t he?”

 

Akashi’s face shut down. “That remains to be seen, as of this moment.”

 

“Unless you get to go to his house?” Chihiro said. “Didn’t take you for a kid needing a sleepover, Akashi.”

 

“I didn’t take you for a fool, Chihiro.” Akashi answered. Gaze like molten fire.

 

Chihiro’s grip on his manga slipped a little. But Akashi and Nijimura were pains in the asses when they fought. Drove Mibuchi up the wall. And Hayama and Nebuya with him. Chihiro would have to put up with all of them for four full days next week. It could at least be tolerable. “He doesn’t want you there,” he said, shortly. “And we all know why. His family hates him.”

 

Akashi straightened in his seat.

 

Chihiro considered potential escape routes. Mibuchi had forced them to sit at a table-booth. Two rows of uncomfortable seats, facing each other, with an aluminium-topped table between them. He and Akashi were both at the window. Hayama’s departure had left an empty space next to Akashi, but Mibuchi was blocking the aisle. And Nebuya was a big useless lump of muscle in Chihiro’s way.

 

He took a breath. Plunged forward. “Why do you even need to go anyway? Just don’t. Just leave it alone.”

 

Akashi only looked at him.

 

A beat. Two. And three.

 

The silence was oppressive.

 

And then Akashi said, quiet, “I am not my father.”

 

A spike of irritation. Unease. “What the fuck does that mean?”

 

“It means, Chihiro, that I will not.”

 

“Will not,” Chihiro repeated. “You won’t leave it alone.”

 

Akashi picked up his novel. Opened it to the correct page. Began reading again.

 

At least this time, Chihiro thought nastily, his eyes were actually moving.

 

He should have known better than to think Akashi would care about what Nijimura wanted. What any of them wanted.

 

He ignored the niggling bit of his mind that wanted to contradict that thought. That remembered Akashi Seijuro standing, fifteen years old and bandaged within an inch of his life, in the doorway to Chihiro’s hospital room and telling him that they would win the Winter Cup. Akashi Seijuro, holding out a gift-wrapped light novel on Chihiro’s birthday in March.

 

Akashi Seijuro, turning a slow, stone-cold gaze on each of the people standing outside the door of his room at the spring training camp, after Nijimura made his embarassingly rejected confession, and the admission that came after.

 

It didn’t make any sense.

 

Akashi should care. Akashi did care.

 

But he was afraid.

 

Chihiro banged his head against the back of his chair. Squeezed his eyes shut. He didn’t want to know.

 

And why, said that part of himself that had decided that being ruthlessly honest was in the order of the day, didn’t he want to know?

 

The table rattled.

 

Hayama pulled back from where he had slammed into the alumnium edge, rubbing his middle. “Ow. Ow-ow- _ow_.”

 

Akashi paid no attention.

 

Hayama’s gaze flickered to Akashi, flinched away, and then darted between the four people at the table. Nebuya let out a loud snore. Mibuchi muttered something about fans and nails. Chihiro wasn’t fast enough to look away.

 

Hayama widened his eyes. Widened them further.

 

Chihiro wasn’t in a mood to play at guess-the-code-language-he-hadn’t-been-inducted-into. Went back to his manga.

 

Akashi looked up from his book.

 

“Mayuzumi,” Hayama hissed. And then, meaningfully, “It’s about Mochida.”

 

Equally meaningfully, and without looking up. “I’m reading.”

 

Hayama’s hands slammed down on the table. Too loud.

 

Mibuchi jumped. “Nails,” he said. And then, “Kotaro.”

 

“It’s Mochida, Reo-nee,” Hayama said.

 

Another snore rumbled from inside Nebuya’s cavernous stomach.

 

Akashi said, perfectly pleasant, gaze fixed not on his novel but on Hayama, who wilted under the distinction. “I dislike that you seem to be attempting to tell everyone but me about this – Mochida.”

 

Chihiro could see the moment that Hayama gave up. He lifted his right hand from where it had banged against the table and ran it through his bright hair. “It’s that first-year kid from this afternoon.”

 

Blankly, “No.”

 

Mibuchi said, “He’s the one you refused to play against. The one-on-one. You remember, Sei-chan.”

 

A flicker of expression.

 

Chihiro dropped his manga on the table. Sent a sharp glare at Hayama. “Just tell us what the fuck is going on.”

 

Hayama’s mouth worked. Twisted. And then he said, “He’s saying things. Mochida. About Nijimura.”

 

“About Shuzo,” Akashi said.

 

“His dad,” Hayama said, unhappily.

 

“What is Mochida saying, exactly, Kotaro?” Mibuchi said.

 

Hayama slid down, chin resting on the table. As if anyone could hear them in the buzz and noise of the train.

 

Chihiro didn’t need him to say it.

 

He watched with a morbid fascination anyway.

 

Hayama said, low, “He’s saying – everyone’s saying, now – that Nijimura killed him. His father.”

 

The voices around them swelled. A lamp sweeping by outside the window of the train cast dark orange light across Chihiro’s hands, Hayama’s face.

 

Mibuchi said, “Where is Shuzo-kun right now?”

 

“I don’t know.”

 

Chihiro moved his gaze from Hayama to their captain.

 

Akashi’s fingers were loose around his novel. His expression controlled. “Shuzo will look after himself for the moment. I will discuss matters with him, as related to the team, on Sunday.”

 

“But –” Hayama began.

 

“Thank you for bringing this to my attention, Kotaro.”

 

I thought, Chihiro wanted to say – sudden, unexpected, bitter – that you weren’t going to let it go. What – is this different?

 

The words stuck in his throat. A line he wouldn’t cross. Akashi was Akashi. Chihiro was Chihiro. And after everything Akashi had done, that Chihiro still couldn’t forgive – being turned into a copy of an original; being used and discarded in games like a chess piece, as if Akashi didn’t himself understand what it was like to be worth nothing, to be trampled underfoot; all of those things that had not changed about Akashi Seijuro even if Chihiro now knew that there was a better person somewhere underneath – all of those things. Chihiro would not be his friend.

 

 

 

“Nii-chan’s home,” Kou remarked to his sister.

 

They were in the living room. Nee-chan was playing video-games. Had complained that the thing that sucked most about living in a dorm was that she didn’t have a TV. And playing on a computer – especially the low-screen-resolution, low-processing-power machines that Kaa-san insisted on buying for them – was just not worth the time and attention that should be properly devoted to any game.

 

Nee-chan ignored him.

 

Kou, sitting cross-legged on the windowsill with a book in his lap, slid the cushion from behind his back and threw it at her head.

 

Nee-chan wasn’t the kind of person to jump. She was like Nii-chan like that. Slowly, she lifted the cushion from where it had tumbled to the floor next to her elbow, and glanced in Kou’s direction. Her long black ponytail slipped over her shoulder. Dark blue eyes narrowed.

 

He raised his hands, palms up. “Alert system was your idea. Nii-chan’s home. Kaa-san Blizzard 101 is about to descend on our heads.”

 

His sister got to her feet. Simply, gracefully. Also like Nii-chan. Kou suppressed a general feeling of irritation. They didn’t even play the same sport, his older brother and sister. Nee-chan was a swimmer. Freestyle and butterfly. Nii-chan was a basketball player. But of course they had both excelled in it since they got into a pool, picked up a ball. Probably hadn’t even had to try.

 

Kou examined the thought, turned it over, and then discarded it. He was trying to be a better person. He didn’t want to be like Kaa-san. He had decided already. After she told him and Nee-chan what she was planning – in a family conference call over Skype, just the three of them, as if Kou wasn’t living in the same house, as if Nii-chan had no need to be included, as if it had nothing to do with – 

 

A breath. A deep breath. Kou was going to be a better person.

 

The gate swung shut. Iron on iron. In the relative quiet of their suburban street, it was a sharp, lonely sound. Impossible to ignore.

 

Kaa-san was in the kitchen. Writing up a company presentation. The sounds of typing stopped. Started up again, more forcefully. A book banged onto the floor.

 

“Dropped it,” Nee-chan said. Unperturbed.

 

Kou watched his sister go to the front door.

 

“Sachi,” Kaa-san said. Loud.

 

“What,” Nee-chan said. Biting. Kou winced. “He hasn’t graduated yet, is he?”

 

The door opened, the bottom edge swinging smoothly across the wood tiles, the beginning of the faded red floor mat. Kou tracked the movement, then lifted his eyes.

 

Nii-chan’s gaze was a cool grey. Flicked between Kou and his sister. “Brats,” he said. And then to Sachi, “How’s high school?”

 

“I’m on the swim team,” Nee-chan said. Just as even. She put her hands into the pockets of her thin blue jacket.

 

Kou hunched his shoulders.

 

“Congratulations,” Nii-chan said. Lifted a hand. The ridiculous rainbow wristband his junior high teammates had given him as a retirement gift gleamed brighter in the fluorescent light. Stood out in contrast to Nee-chan’s hair as their brother ruffled it. There was a tension in the movement, Kou saw. Something barely visible. A hairline crack in otherwise smooth metal.

 

Nee-chan laughed. “I’m fifteen years old.”

 

They had always gotten along more easily than Kou and Nii-chan.

 

Kou almost allowed himself to smile.

 

A laptop lid slammed shut. A chair leg scratched across the kitchen tiles.

 

Nii-chan’s face blanked. A moment. And then his hand dropped from Nee-chan’s head. He stepped up from the entryway, past Kou’s sister, and into the open archway to the kitchen. His luggage bag remained behind him, compact and alone next to the shoe rack. The handle stuck straight up.

 

Slowly, Nee-chan closed the front door.

 

Kou remembered why it was so easy to hate his brother. His sister. It was in the line of their backs. The way they held themselves. The arrogance. The persistent, unnecessary, stupid guilt. As if any of what had happened – any of it at all – had been their fault.

 

Kou was not a good person. He couldn't be a better one.

 

Fuck this.

 

His shoe scraped on the floor. Nee-chan turned. By that time, Kou was already up the stairs. At least it was right in front of the door. Just past the kitchen. Kou didn’t even have to look inside.

 

Nii-chan’s gaze shifted to him. A sliver of a moment. A familiar weight.

 

“Shuzo,” Kaa-san said, stiffly.

 

Nee-chan’s mouth moved. A silent breath.

 

Kou’s hand was on the banister. He looked at it. And then peeled his fingers apart, shoved the hand into his pocket instead.

 

 

 

Saturdays at home were for manga and light novels; Chihiro had decided this a long time ago. None of his Rakuzan teammates were very much fans of manga and light novels; that alone was a bonus.

 

It was fair enough that he shouldn’t have expected to run into either Hayama or another less familiar face. Open his mouth, when he did, and say: “Ah. You’re the person who came into Rakuzan and punched Yamada in the face.”

 

Pale blue eyes narrowed. “You’re from Rakuzan?”

 

Hayama grinned. Gestured expansively between them. “Sekiguchi Toru, meet Mayuzumi Chihiro. We’re both on the first string.”

 

“With Nijimura,” Sekiguchi Toru observed.

 

“Nijimura knew you,” Chihiro said.

 

“We were teammates at Teiko.”

 

Hayama folded his arms behind his head, bounced on the balls of his feet. “Sekiguchi transferred to Seirin a while back. We’ll be meeting him in the Inter-High. That’s cool, right? It’s cool.” A sharp show of teeth. “He beat up Yamada, so that’s enough to like him. But I mean, since we all play basketball – that will be even more fun.”

 

For an idiot, Chihiro sometimes forgot that, like the other first-string players on Rakuzan, Hayama could be ruthless. With a carelessness that contrasted with Mibuchi’s mocking deliberation, Nebuya’s straightforward arrogance, and Akashi’s – Chihiro switched his bag of manga and light novels from his right hand to his left. The weight was beginning to strain his fingers.

 

He didn’t want to think about Akashi. That little revelation he had had – what he thought of Akashi, what he thought of himself in relation to Akashi – last night on the train – that was best ignored.

 

They would be going their separate ways after the Inter-High anyway. A few more months. And then the third-years would retire.

 

Akashi could rule by himself.

 

Hayama turned to Sekiguchi. The tone of his voice was light. “How do you know Yamada, Sekiguchi?”

 

A beat of silence. Sekiguchi’s shoes scraped back, a normal, half-instinctive reaction to Hayama when he turned predatory. The movement aborted though; Sekiguchi caught himself. “Why do you care?” Flat.

 

“No real reason,” Hayama said, without tension. “Just that – we all have a bone to pick with him, so. I thought we could commiserate. Get to know each other. You and Shun are close right? It would be good to get to know each other.”

 

Shun. Who was Shun? Chihiro wanted to walk away. Leave Hayama to carry out the protective shit that the Rakuzan team liked to dish out for each other, as if they were anything more than teammates.

 

But Yamada was Yamada.

 

And Chihiro found himself rooted to the spot.

 

The sun beat down upon their heads. Chihiro was sweating, water running down his forehead and arms; it was a hot day. The end of April; spring, shifting into summer.

 

“A bone,” Sekiguchi repeated. His shoulders were tense in his white Seirin T-shirt. “What kind of bone?”

 

With laser precision, Hayama let his arms drop from behind his head and put them into the pockets of his pants. Matter-of-fact, face bland, “He drugged our captain. Last year. Drugged him, and then beat him up. Mayuzumi here too.” A tilt of the head. “They were both in the hospital, and Mayuzumi couldn’t play for at least two months. Broken foot. Not that Yamada paid for any of that. Just got sent off by Daddy to a boarding school for a while and then came straight back.”

 

The words broke from Chihiro before he could stop himself. “Hayama,” he bit out. “Shut the fuck up.”

 

“I don’t care if Akashi gets mad,” Hayama said, defiantly. “It’s the truth. And Sekiguchi here, if he doesn’t know, probably should. Yamada’s a little shit. If Reo-nee hadn’t said we shouldn’t, if Akashi hadn’t, like, warned us off on pain of death, Ei-chan and I would have already done something about it. But we can’t. So.” He had stopped bouncing, was now standing utterly still, body pulled tight into itself, in-between Chihiro and Sekiguchi. His shadow on the cement sidewalk was short beneath the afternoon sun. 

 

Chihiro’s fingers clenched. White around the handle of his paper bag.

 

Sekiguchi ducked his head. His hair was short, stuck out at the edges. “I knew,” he said. Almost too low for anyone to hear.

 

Hayama’s left hand slipped out from his pocket. A fist. “What?”

 

“He told me a few months after we met.” His eyes lifted again. Deliberately bland. “So I knew. What you told me just now. About Akashi and Mayuzumi.”

 

Chihiro was not the kind of person to be disappointed in people. Particularly someone he had only met once before.

 

Seirin’s Izuki Shun had known him for longer. Probably. His voice, when it cut into the silence, was like frosted glass, hard, cold to the touch, and unreadable. “Sekiguchi. Kotaro-kun.”

 

Sekiguchi flinched.

 

Hayama looked up. “Shun.”

 

“Is this why you wanted to go ahead with Sekiguchi?” Izuki asked Hayama. There was a plastic bag in his hand. Translucent. Chihiro could see the outlines of videos inside. Rented, from the logo. Chihiro knew the store. “To get ice-cream.”

 

He registered these details with detachment. He had become a spectator a long time ago. To whatever drama was working out in Hayama’s and Sekiguchi’s individual minds. Pathetic.

 

The part of his mind that said that their drama revolved around Akashi’s drama, and a specific incident in the script, and so therefore it was Chihiro’s drama too – he ignored it.

 

Hayama didn’t respond.

 

Sekiguchi said, “I can go, Izuki.”

 

“No,” his teammate said. “Today, we’re going to watch rented videos of ‘Rent’. I’ve wanted to watch a musical for a long time. Nee-san says they’re very musical.” He nodded. Once, twice.

 

Hayama’s face broke, for a moment, into a smile.

 

Izuki watched him. His gaze softened.

 

Chihiro felt sweat track down the back of his neck. Lifted a hand to press it against the bridge of his nose. A headache was coming on. Akashi and Nijimura. And now Hayama and a point guard from Seirin. Complicated, anime-esque romance happening everywhere. “I’m leaving,” he said.

 

Sekiguchi shook his head. “No, I think I’m going to go. I have – stuff to take care of anyway. That I’ve been putting off.”

 

“Yamada,” Chihiro said, sharp. Then cursed himself. He didn’t care; he wasn’t involved. He was involved, but only so far as necessary –

 

Sekiguchi wasn’t a coward, whatever else he was. “Yes.”

 

Hayama’s mouth opened. Izuki put a hand on his shoulder. “Later, Kotaro-kun.” And then, brightly. “I’ll see you at training camp then, Sekiguchi.”

 

A wave of a hand, almost bored – defiant, Chihiro thought – and Sekiguchi walked away from them, hands in pockets.

 

Chihiro’s gut churned. Yesterday, and today. The careless precision in Hayama’s voice, earlier, when he dug into someone they barely even knew. The look on his face after. And Chihiro’s own inability to shut up.

 

This was Akashi.

 

Who the fuck did they even think they were?

 

He heard himself say, flat, “You don’t need to do that, you know.”

 

Dark green eyes blinked. “Are you talking to me?”

 

“Who else would I be talking to?” Chihiro snapped. “It’s not like I know your boyfriend. Why are you even dating someone from Seirin? For one of Akashi’s lapdogs, that’s a stupid thing to do.”

 

“Akashi’s –” Hayama said, tone more incredulous than angry. “You’re part of Rakuzan too, Mayuzumi.”

 

“And you don’t need to defend him. Pick fights for him. He’s not here. And even if he was –”

 

“We’re teammates,” Hayama bit out. “What –”

 

Izuki was watching the exchange with a still, dark gaze.

 

Chihiro was hollow and twisted inside. Hot air pressed tight at the back of his throat,  fingers scrabbling at his ribs. He was angry. He didn’t know why. “Even if he was here, it wouldn’t matter. We’re retiring in a couple of months. The Inter-High will be over, and then we’ll retire. And Akashi won’t care. Because he’s that kind of shitty person. If we’re not useful – we’re not worth noticing. Worth remembering. He’ll forget about us as soon as he’s properly moulded his next winning set of tools. That’s who Akashi Seijuro is. And if you’ve forgotten that –”

 

Hayama’s fingers twisted in Chihiro’s collar. His face pressed into his. “Shut up, Mayuzumi.” A breath.

 

“What?” Chihiro said. Knew that he was being cruel, this time, in the next thing that he said. “Do you honestly think that Akashi’ll be grateful? Or, better yet, do you think that being on the same team as Akashi Seijuro means that you’re friends? You should know better, Hayama.”

 

The grip on his collar tightened. Hayama’s face froze.

 

Chihiro said, “After that pathetic game your junior high team played against Teiko three years ago.”

 

“Everyone lost to the Generation of Miracles,” Izuki observed. Took a step forward.

 

“And everyone who did wallowed together,” Chihiro said, focused on Hayama, who had released him but was still in Chihiro’s personal space, too close for comfort.

 

It made Chihiro irritable. The way his teammate wouldn’t look up. React. Chihiro wanted him to react. Chihiro existed. Chihiro mattered. Whatever ‘lack of presence’ shit Akashi tried to make use of. Whatever Akashi, in his emperor-like tendencies and ridiculous absolutism, liked to make other people, not just Chihiro, feel.

 

Cruel, “Except your team, Hayama. They blamed you. The Uncrowned King. Shouted at you right in the basketball court.”

 

That Chihiro’d been there – he didn’t say that. Didn’t say that in middle school was when he had started to be interested in basketball, been fascinated by the level of skill the Generation of Miracles could achieve. The shining light. The _miraculousness_. The transcendence. That he had only realized that that transcendence for the six of them became – limitation – when applied to everyone else. Limitation meaning that Chihiro’s only value was in being used.

 

“And what – did you miss your popularity that much?” He was still speaking. Couldn’t make himself stop. “That you’re determined now to –”

 

Hayama shook his head. Sudden, abortive. “ _Shut up_ , Mayuzumi. Just shut up.”

 

“Akashi doesn’t make friends,” Chihiro bit out.

 

“Shut up,” Hayama repeated. Walked backwards. A step. Two. Out of Chihiro’s space. His hands were back in his pockets. “I’m going to go.”

 

“I’ll come,” Izuki said. Quiet, authoritative.

 

Hayama’s shoes slapped against the concrete. His back was to Chihiro. His shadow had gone, or become lighter, longer.

 

Chihiro raised his head. The sky was full of clouds. As he stood there, still, unmoving, a gust of wind snapped across the sidewalk.

 

The plastic bag was straining against his hand. He had forgotten about it, for a moment. 

 

Fuck this. Really, fuck this.

 

 

 

Shuzo drove past Tatsuya, reached the three-point line, jumped back to take a shot. It hit the hoop, bounced off.

 

Tatsuya caught the rebound. Put the basketball under his arm.

 

“What?” Shuzo said. Sweat slipped down his back, his arms. A cloud had passed over the sky, so it wasn’t as hot as it had been before. But it was still warm.

 

His friend smiled. Tatsuya’s deliberate smile. “We’ve played for half an hour already. And you’re off, Shuu. Getting worse, actually. Spit it out.”

 

“Nothing to spit out,” Shuzo said. Automatic. Even though the first image that came to mind, burning and insidious as smoke, was his classmate – class president – sitting down in the vacated seat next to him, and saying quietly, “Nijimura-san, do you know what people in the next car are saying about you?”

 

“Really.”

 

“Really.”

 

A narrowed gaze. And then Tatsuya turned his back on him, stepped back to the three-point line. With beautiful precision, the basketball curved into the hoop. The net swished. The ball slapped onto the ground.

 

Shuzo smiled, despite himself. “Making a point?”

 

“You can usually sink those too,” Tatsuya said, flatly. “With a higher success rate than you’ve had this afternoon.”

 

Shuzo walked below the hoop, snatched up the ball where it was bouncing towards the edge of the court, each bounce progressively lower than the last. “Do you know what you’re going to do about university?”

 

“Don’t change the subject.”

 

Shuzo’s class president had said, the dark brown hair framing her face lit with yellow in the fluorescent lighting of the train, reminding Shuzo, irrationally, of Sei. Sei’s golden eye. “It’s about – ”

 

At that moment, the class president’s best friend, a loud girl who had always been friendly to Shuzo in the past, because her father had died in a car accident, and she seemed to think that that created a connection between them, slammed into the cabin. Pushed her way into Shuzo’s space, squashing her friend in the process. “Nijimura,” she said, cold and furious. “Is it true? About your dad.”

 

And Shuzo, earphones loose in his palm, expression deliberately blank, had not known what she expected him to say. What the question was, even. Was it true that his father had died? Was it true that Shuzo had killed him? Was what Shuzo had done – was it murder?

 

Did she expect him to know the answer to the last two questions? Did she expect him to bloody know? Oba-san, Kaa-san, dead Tou-san, maybe even Kou and Sachi – they all expected him to _know_ –

 

“I don’t,” Shuzo told Tatsuya.

 

“You don’t what?” his friend said.

 

“I don’t know what I’m going to do about university. Here, catch.”

 

Tatsuya’s hands lifted, instinctively, closed around the ball after Shuzo threw it to him. His gaze dropped to the ball, lifted back up to Shuzo. Narrowed. And then, a calculated concession. “America. I’m going back. My family’s there.”

 

“Going to continue playing basketball?”

 

“Of course.”

 

Shuzo nodded. Held his hands up for the ball. “Pass.”

 

Tatsuya gave the impression of being a patient person. And he was, when it came to basketball. Practicing, drilling, throwing hoop after hoop until he had achieved the closest to technical perfection that someone could achieve. But when it came to riddles, competition, things that didn’t make immediate, instinctive sense – the cracks came soon, and easily. Shuzo’s friend snapped. “Shuu. What’s going on?”

 

In the end, it was easier than Shuzo had ever thought it would be, to say, “Kaa-san’s disowning me.”

 

If this were one of Mayuzumi’s light novel scenes, the ball would swish through the hoop in this moment, lit gold against the summer sun. But, no, it bounced off the rim, rolled towards the edge of the court. Two little kids playing on the other side of the public court laughed, slapped their hands together in a high-five. Their ball was bouncing a slow rhythm beneath the hoop.

 

“What?” Tatsuya said.

 

“I’m graduating April next year,” Shuzo said. “And I have that money from my dad.”

 

“That’s not the point –”

 

“And Kaa-san said – I should understand. Actions have consequences. And it’s not like Tou-san didn’t give me enough to get through university. Graduate, get a job – ” It was easy to speak, very difficult to move. Shuzo walked over to the edge of the court, picked up the ball. His fingers, as he looked at them, were shaking. “ – don’t come home.”

 

Tatsuya’s voice was biting in its fury. “She said _what_.”

 

A breath. A second one. He lifted the ball, balanced it on his open palm.

 

“Shuu,” Tatsuya said.

 

“I’m fine.”

 

The sky was bright again. The clouds had gone. Tatsuya’s face was open. The expression on it – Shuzo didn’t want to read what it said. 

 

 

 

Sachi found her brother, on Sunday morning, one hour before noon, digging through his clothes in his room. “Nii-san,” she said, standing inside the open doorway of his room in bemusement. “What are you doing?”

 

“You were the one who wanted to come in,” Nii-san snapped. “Close the door.”

 

Nii-san, Sachi reflected, in the distant bitter way she found she had acquired at some point over the past year – the more distant the better – hadn’t used to shut his door. He had told her, well, implied, once that he didn’t like the quiet, the way that, with a solid sheet of wood between him and the rest of the house, it felt like he was alone.

 

The reason that Nii-san had told her that was because Sachi had told him, first, that she was scared. Tou-san’s bald head; the way that Kaa-san walked around the house, sometimes overly loud and purposeful, sometimes quiet, as if she wanted her footsteps to disappear. It made Sachi afraid, more afraid that she knew what to do with – this wasn’t some bully in the playground Sachi could punch into the ground; it wasn’t some competitive brat at the swimming pool she could beat in ten seconds flat – and she had found her brother in his room one day, and made the words come out, half-angry, half-defiant. Who else had there been to tell? And if she didn’t tell someone – it would burst out from her, take bone and blood with it, and what would she do then?

 

Nii-san – Nii-san had looked at her, eyes dark grey like her own but always calmer, like a sea in the eye of the storm. He said nothing for a moment. His headphones were slung around his neck, his computer sat in front of him on top of the blue bedsheets. Probably, he’d been watching some stupid basketball game.

 

Sachi’s throat closed in the silence. An anticipation of judgement. They were eleven and thirteen respectively. They had hated each other, at eleven and thirteen.

 

And then her brother said, “Leave the door open.”

 

His tone; it was the same one he used when she and Kou were scrapping over the last cookie. Split it, you brats. And then he would break it in half for them.

 

“What?”

 

“The wood’s thick. Room’s too quiet when it’s closed. Weird cut-off. Leave it open.”

 

Her feet sunk into the deep green furry mat Kaa-san had put on Nii-san’s bedroom floor. The window behind the bed was propped open on its little iron rod. Sunlight washed in, summer-warm, bright.

 

Sachi was aware, suddenly, of how much sound there was. Crickets, chirping through the window. A child laughing on the street outside. And from the door she had left open, her other brother’s voice, sharp and loud with annoyance at one of his elementary school friends.

 

A world outside of herself. A reinforcement of reality.

 

She could breathe.

 

Nii-san smiled. A slight, iron smile with the same bite she had had in her voice earlier when she threw her words, her fear, at him. Half-angry. Half-defiant. “It’s better now, right?” And then, “Everything’ll be fine, Sachi. You’ll see.”

 

She hadn’t wanted to ask. Knew, instinctively, how unfair a question it was the moment it left her mouth. But, still. “Do you promise?”

 

A beat. A second one. And then he said, “I promise.”

 

“You swear,” Sachi insisted, despite herself, digging her toes into the furry mat, folding her arms over her chest. The first time in months that someone had told her, had promised her, that everything would be fine. Perfectly fine. Kaa-san and Tou-san, Oba-san and Oji-san, the teachers at school – they had all stopped giving those promises a long time ago. 

 

Downstairs, Kou’s friend shouted back at him. Something crashed against the wall. Followed by the sound of breaking glass. The kitchen door slammed open. Kaa-san’s voice joined the fray. High-pitched, tearing at the edges. Tearing, tearing.

 

Sachi’s world narrowed in on itself again.

 

She refused to see the expression on Nii-san’s face, as he nodded, once, twice, and then said, “I swear.”

 

Years later, she stood in a different incarnation of Nii-san’s bedroom, in a different room from the one they had lived in when Tou-san first became sick. The window was behind the desk instead of the bed. There was no dark green, fluffy mat on the sunstained floor. To come inside, she had had to knock on her brother’s closed door.

 

He dug a tie out from the bottom of his closet, looped it around his neck. As his fingers worked the smooth silk material – was that the same tie he had worn to Tou-san’s funeral? – he turned fully to face Sachi. Five feet of space between them. “So. What did you want?”

 

“Where are you going? And in that get-up.”

 

Cross left. Loop. Up. Through. Cross right. Up. Through. Tighten. “I may or may not be going to some rich old man’s birthday party.”

 

“May or may not be going,” Sachi repeated. And then:“Where did you learn how to do that?”

 

He eyed her. Short, pleated skirt, jacket over a cream blouse. “My boyfriend. Apparently there’s more than one way to knot a tie. Who the – ” he caught himself, “Damn knows why. And you? In that get-up.”

 

She almost put her hands in the pockets of her jacket, remembered at the last minute that it was too short for that. “Shopping mall with friends. You have a boyfriend.”

 

“I do. You came in here for something. What was it?’

 

Nii-san’s window was open. In their suburban neighbourhood, the street tended to be quiet, but for the occasional scratch of car tyres, the rumble of an engine. Schoolkids, sometime later in the day, footsteps and loud voices.

 

Sachi was breathing. Her head was clear. “Nii-san.”

 

“What?”

 

“Why did you do that? On Friday night. Say –” There were things that, when demanded, were inherently selfish. Things that were not. This was what Sachi had learned, since that childish day long ago. “ – nothing when Kaa-san talked to you.”

 

Nii-san reached behind him for the blazer on his desk chair. “What did you expect me to say?”

 

“Say _something_.”

 

Her control was less than she had thought. She had come here to – do what was best. Do the right thing. Help Nii-san.

 

But she was angry. It was difficult to think when she was angry. “Say something, Nii-san. Kaa-san’s being unreasonable. We all know that. We’ve known that since Tou-san died. She’s your mother, not – not – she can’t decide, all by herself, to stop. Just because – ”

 

“I killed Tou-san,” Nii-san said.

 

Only the slight inflection at the end, the tip towards a question rather than a statement, prevented Sachi from snapping.

 

She wasn’t that frightened little girl anymore, who had needed the reassurance of a child only two years older than herself.

 

Her feet moved across the floor. Less space between her and her brother. He was taller than her. Didn’t flinch.

 

She heard herself say, sharp and cruel, in a way that Nii-san wasn’t but that Kou could be, “It’s just like you to wallow in self-pity. But not like you to be a coward.”

 

The noon sunlight was bright. An engine rumbled slowly down the street outside.

 

Don’t interfere, Natsuko had said, Sachi’s old elementary school friend who she had met again on their first day of high school. I remember what your Nii-san was like. And I don’t think, Sacc-chan, that he would like it if –

 

Sometimes, it wasn’t about what Nii-san _wanted_.

 

Just like it shouldn’t, years ago, have been about what Sachi wanted.

 

Sachi had run away from herself then. Herself and that warm, wider world that, for a moment, her brother had opened her eyes to. And no matter what Kou seemed to believe of his older siblings, Sachi at least had continued running. Leaving Nii-san to make the decision on his own, during those awful thirty-six hours when Nii-san disappeared because Kaa-san and Oba-san wouldn’t stop telling him what decision he should make – of course, what decision he should make. Afterwards, leaving the room when Kaa-san said, eyes wet and cold, that she needed to speak to Nii-san alone. Still afterwards, at the funeral, when Oba-san hugged her and Kou, and after a moment’s hesitation, Nii-san too. And still afterwards. Going to boarding school, leaving Kou alone in the house with their mother. And again, and again, and again.

 

A moment of irony – ah, this was about her again then. About what Sachi wanted, needed to do.

 

But she accepted this. Self-pity, cowardice – things that she and Nii-san shared.

 

Sachi – Sachi wanted to –

 

“Wake up, Nii-san! You decided Tou-san would prefer to die than live like that –” Brain-dead, unresponsive. His dark hair, just beginning to grow back weeks after he had refused to continue chemotherapy, hanging limp over his forehad. “ – then you decided it. So fucking live with it. Ignore Kaa-san. She’s not important. She stopped being important when she decided to disown you. And even that doesn’t matter – because – because Kaa-san can do what she likes, but I’m your sister. And Kou’s your brother. And she can screw herself if she thinks otherwise. And I’ll move out when I’ve graduated too, or something – ” Out of control, fast. Heat rose to her face, sat damp in the back of her throat. Her right hand lifted, half-instinctive. She snatched it back down to her side.

 

“Don’t swear,” her brother said, automatically.

 

“I said – ”

 

“I heard what you said.”

 

A knock came on the door. Kou’s voice. Cautious, edged with annoyance. “Nii-chan. That Akashi guy is here for you.”

 

Nii-san’s blazer was in his hand. Rather than pull it on, he hefted it over his shoulder. Studied Sachi for a moment. “You shouldn’t move out.”

 

“Is that all that you heard.”

 

A half-smile. Like the one he had worn all those years ago when Sachi came into his room and left the door open behind her. And yet, different. The defiance in it, the anger – that was gone. What was left was iron. A thin, sharp metal. “You’re right. Is that what you wanted to know? Self-pity and cowardice and things like that. It’s not like I haven’t thought about it before. I’m wallowing. I’m being desperate. Unreasonable.”

 

Her brother made her furious. That matter-of-fact air that was sometimes just plain condescending. This feeling as if she were speaking to a blank wall, sometimes, that wouldn’t crack no matter how loud or long she shouted.

 

To be fair, it wasn’t as if she had tried, before this. She hadn’t.

 

She said, flat, “That wasn’t what I wanted – it wasn’t what I meant at all.”

 

“You’re right,” he said, after a moment. Again. She tensed. But then he said, “It wasn’t. Sorry.”

 

“Nii-chan,” Kou said, outside the door. Knocked again.

 

“Go away, Kou,” their brother said. Raised his voice. He turned his back on Sachi for a moment, swiped his phone and a set of keys from the desk. He didn’t keep his keys downstairs anymore. Sachi didn’t understand why. “I’m coming down.”

 

Thirteen-year-old Nii-san hadn’t got up from his bed, let Sachi stand on the mat in front of him, the window open, the door open, the world sun-bright around them. His gaze, even as he promised her what he shouldn’t have had to promise, swore what he should have known better than to swear – a guilt that wasn’t his, a presumption in taking it anyway – had been edged with a reflection of Sachi’s own fear.

 

But Sachi’s brother four years later lifted his hand, let it drop on her shoulder. He had stopped smiling. His fingers, pressed lightly against the fabric of her jacket, were reassuring. A presence, if not a promise.

 

“I’ll think about what you said,” Nii-san said. “And don’t be too angry at Kaa-san, Sachi. I think – ” he paused. “I think she has her own reasons for doing this.”

 

Sachi hunched into herself. Nii-san’s hand slipped from her shoulder. “Please. Don’t.”

 

“Everything will be fine,” he said. Automatic.

 

Kou’s footsteps had retreated back across the landing. Down the stairs. Some guy named Akashi was waiting for their brother outside. Maybe someone who would look at Nii-san and know what in bloody, freezing hell he was thinking.

 

She lifted her head, smiled at her brother. Said, cold, “Don’t promise that.”

 

Her brother left the door open behind him. Light from the skylight above the staircase washed across the wooden floorboards. Cast Nii-san’s shadow, and Sachi’s, perpendicular to one another.

 

 

 

Shuzo looked well, in a suit and tie. Seijuro allowed himself to look for only a moment before nodding and gesturing towards the car. “Shuzo. It’s good to see you.”

 

“You came,” Shuzo observed. His foot tapped, once, on the sidewalk. A sharp movement. On edge.

 

“I apologize for not confirming it ahead of time,” Seijuro said.

 

Takayama-san, standing by the passenger door of the car, bowed. “If the young master and his friend would please step inside. Akashi-sama is waiting.”

 

Shuzo slid in after Seijuro, leaned back against the leather headrest. Seijuro watched him. Shuzo did not look uncomfortable in these surroundings, unused to this kind of luxury as he must be. But then again, Seijuro’s former captain rarely did. Part of the unapologetically confident air he projected. And the suit – it wasn’t as formal as Seijuro should have specified, or that many of the guests at the party would expect, but it was very –

 

A quick half-smile in Seijuro’s direction. “Like what you see?”

 

Bland. “Yes.”

 

Shuzo laughed, involuntary from the almost-surprised look on his face that came after. The sound, as always, made Seijuro’s skin prickle. His blood, in contrast, flow calmer and more steady.

 

At the same time, it reawakened a sharp discomfort. “Events on the train –”

 

“You heard about it too,” Shuzo said. “Suppose I should have expected that.”

 

“It will die down,” Seijuro said, sharp and flat.

 

“Hayama called once or twice. I checked my phone afterwards. But you didn’t look for me,” Shuzo said. Siiting in the seat next to Seijuro, it was difficult to see his expression. Just the set of his shoulders, the shadow in the space beneath his jawline and between his collarbones. “I thought you might have. Since you were insisting on coming to my house for some damn-unknowable reason.”

 

“You would not have welcomed the company,” Seijuro said. Did not curl his fingers into the indents in the car seat. The smooth black leather. “Or the illusion of protection. Of a necessity for defense.”

 

“No, I wouldn’t.”

 

The street slipped by. A turn in the road.

 

Shuzo said, and this time there was a ripple of anger in his voice, “If you know that. If you understand that, then what the hell is up with you?”

 

“You would prefer your home closed to me,” Seijuro said. Provocative. He was on edge as well, apprehensive, irritated; Shuzo’s tone, the events of the past day. Father, declaring what Seijuro must do as if laying down a ruling. As if Seijuro might be commanded. 

 

Immediate. “That’s not the point. And you know it.”

 

“What is the point then, Shuzo?”

 

“You know what the point is.”

 

“Explain it to me. Perhaps you will find it is not so obvious.”

 

“Don’t,” Shuzo’s gaze, finally turned to face him, was the quality of steam evaporating from dry ice, “bloody condescend to me.”

 

Visible through the window behind Seijuro’s – boyfriend; Seijuro needed a better term for Shuzo – was the widening street. The car, moving onto a highway. A large sign passed them by.

 

Takayama-san was silent as he drove. An invisible presence in front of the wheel.

 

Not long after meeting Chihiro, it had occurred to Seijuro how very grating his teammate would find Seijuro’s home life, should he ever have reason to visit Seijuro’s home. The chauffeurs, servants, Western-style house with its curving grand stairway and marble fireplaces. Seijuro’s kind, dead mother. His cold, demanding father. The piano and violin lessons. The white horse that Seijuro’s mother had named Yukimaru in honour of its beautiful pale mane. The shogi, chess, and go boards carved into stone tables lined up next to one another in the garden that an Akashi ancestor had planted full of sakura trees.

 

And now the foreign education. Seijuro’s father’s decision that his son should go to England or America for his degree. Leave behind friends and lover. Learn French or English in a place where Seijuro’s red hair would not be so out of place.

 

Chihiro would say that it had all the elements of a deplorably sentimental romance. In which the heroine from the lower classes would save the cold, hurting love interest. 

 

It irritated Seijuro. His life was not a narrative. He had shut down his father’s suggestion as soon as it had been delivered. Ruling or not.

 

Akashi Masaomi had surveyed his face. Seated at the dinner table, Seijuro at the opposite end, again in that way that Chihiro would either laugh at or tear into from annoyed boredom. “There is not,” he had said, at last, “an individual, or individuals, you imagine staying for, I suppose. Friends. A romantic interest.”

 

The question had stunned Seijuro. His mouth opened. Closed.

 

Father had nodded. “As you like, then. An education abroad is desirable, but inessential.”

 

Seijuro’s refusal had been permitted to pass. When he was a child, it would not have. But Father, Seijuro heard the servants whisper when they thought neither the master nor the young master were listening, had begun to ‘mellow out’. Since his younger brother, Akashi – now Ando – Yuuto had come home from America six weeks ago.

 

Yuuto-oji-san now lived a few streets away from the Akashi family home in Tokyo. With his husband and young son. The son was a full ten years younger than Seijuro. The way Yuuto-oji-san told it, flippantly at the dinner table, he and his husband had found the boy in an orphanage. Taken away from his biological parents for child abuse. And somehow, many months later, and in full acknowledgment of the drama and needless emotionality of it all, that beginning event had resulted in an overwhelming desire to return to Japan and see his useless older brother.

 

Yuuto-oji-san had not fully forgiven Seijuro’s father, for whatever crime he thought Akashi Masaomi had committed, fifteen, twenty years ago. It was in the way he smiled at Seijuro sometimes. A little affectionate, a little distant. And then he would say, jokingly, that Seijuro had really inherited the Akashi genes, and wasn’t that lucky. A statement, instead of a question.

 

The most recent occurrence had been approximately two weeks ago, on a weekend trip home to participate in one of his father’s business meetings.

 

It was not the memory of that, but rather the permission in Father’s voice – the idea that Father believed he was granting Seijuro an indulgence, as if his son were little more than a controllable child – that struck at every nerve.

 

“Sei,” Shuzo said, dangerous.

 

The longer that Seijuro failed to speak, the more agitated Shuzo would become. And then either his temper would boil over, and flare; or he would draw into himself, become cold and unmoving.

 

Seijuro looked away, out of the window, “I am not condescending to you, Shuzo.”

 

“You’re not even looking at me.”

 

Had Shuzo always been this exhausting? This demanding of time and attention to delicate sensibilities. Seijuro watched buildings sweep by. A skyscraper.

 

Companionship, permission – Seijuro refused to tolerate the idea of needing either. He was himself. Akashi Seijuro did not require other people to indulge him, to validate him. He knew who he was. Further, he knew who he was capable of being.

 

That part of his mind – more rational, and further away from Teiko, helplessness, and the difference in perspective with which Seijuro now looked at his parents’ faces in the family photographs still arranged around the Tokyo house – that observed that he was being unjust in his assessment of the situation; Seijuro ignored it.

 

“Right,” he heard Shuzo say, into the quiet. “I’m angry enough that I can’t think straight.”

 

“If you refuse to let me visit your home,” Seijuro said, dismissive. “I will no longer press the matter.”

 

“What, it was a whim?”

 

“An inessential matter.”

 

“Inessential.”

 

“Yes.”

 

A moment. Hesitation. Shuzo did not hesitate. Perhaps it was his relationship with Seijuro that had reduced him to this. “Sei, what –”

 

“My father made a suggestion many months ago. I have been considering it.”

 

Shuzo’s expression could not be read, with Seijuro facing the window away from him. That was well enough. It allowed for more objectivity. Shuzo was still a teammate, a valued comrade. To strain that relationship with misunderstanding would be – unfortunate. Seijuro needed to be precise.

 

“And what suggestion was that,” Shuzo said. Tone guarded. Clothing shifted. Shuzo, tugging at the knot on his tie. Or easing his blazer off his lap. Shuzo did not like to be constrained when he was feeling vulnerable.

 

It was not Seijuro’s intention to make his partner – that was the appropriate term, without the more irritating connotations – feel vulnerable. He composed himself, and then turned his head in Shuzo’s direction. “Expectations,” he said, coolly. “That it is best to expect of one’s friends and family only what should be expected.”

 

“And you agree.”

 

Shuzo’s gaze was narrowed. A building storm of pale grey.

 

Seijuro acted to defuse the storm. “Over the past week, I have arrived at the conclusion that he was correct. I apologize that, in the process, I may have overstepped my boundaries with regard to your home. And your family.”

 

“Right,” Shuzo said. As he had said earlier. A phrase without discernible use except to confirm for no one’s benefit what Seijuro had previously stated. “Right. You apologize, after saying that. And what the fuck do you expect, Seijuro?”

 

Shuzo had never used his full name before.

 

Seijuro was unable to understand the significance. But the tone in Shuzo’s voice was clear enough. “You are angry.”

 

“I’m anrgy. I’ve been angry. But now, I – should I let you come to my house? You’ll come, and then this will be bloody over. You’ll stop talking like that.” His fingers, buried in the dark material of his blazer – it had been the blazer he reached for, set beside him on the seat, after all, and not the tie – tightened, then released.

 

“That is now unrelated,” Seijuro said. 

 

“Is it,” Shuzo said.

 

Repetition. Rhetorical questions. Seijuro’s patience was at a limit.

 

Shuzo, looking into his face, laughed shortly. “It is. Whatever you like, then, Sei.”

 

Following that, further attempts at conversation were rebuffed. Shuzo, refusing to acknowledge Seijuro’s existence.

 

It was childish. But perhaps Seijuro had not made his point objectively enough. He would have to explain himself more clearly at a later time. When Shuzo consented to speak to him again.

 

 

 

Accept it, Sachi had said. Shuzo had made the decision, and so he should accept that he had done so. That he had made it because he believed it was the best – the only – decision he could have made.

 

What Tou-san would have wanted.

 

Was it what Tou-san would have wanted?

 

What qualified Shuzo to know –

 

Tou-san did. It had been Shuzo’s father who had chosen to leave this decision to his eldest son. And Shuzo had made it. Any other way of thinking, as Shuzo’s little sister had pointed out, was pointless. Self-pitying. What did it achieve? The doubt, the uncertainty – Shuzo hadn’t murdered anyone. He hadn’t murdered his father. He had done only what he could do, what he should do.

 

What was done was done. Shuzo’s conscience was clear. Whether Kaa-san accepted the way things had turned out or not – it was, in the great scheme of things, truthfully unimportant. Shuzo was eighteen. He would be nineteen the following year. His father’s money would put him through college, set him up with a modest apartment for a few months while he sorted himself out after graduation. Sachi and Kou would keep in touch – and, anyway, it wasn’t as if the three of them voluntarily spent much time together even when they were in the same house – and Tatsuya, in America, would Skype every so often and laugh in Shuzo’s face about missed deadlines and rent woes.

 

Shuzo would have university; he would have basketball; he would have his siblings and his best friend. He wasn't alone. He had lost nothing that he _needed_ –

 

And so he really, really just needed to move on. Ten months, a year. That had been enough time to grieve. And this newer grief – for his mother, for a home he would have had to leave eventually anyway – that would go away too. Given enough time. 

 

The more Shuzo reflected on this, the clearer his thoughts became. At the same time, darker. As if that rational part of his mind; it was sinking somewhere cool and deep.

 

The way Sei had refused to look at him, as he said things about expectations. Shoulds and onlys.

 

Expect only what should be expected.

 

Akashi Masaomi’s party was well underway. It was an hour and a half after the birthday speech and group lunch, which had been served on tables draped with lace tablecloths. Those had now been cleared away, and the guests, elaborately dressed in suits, dresses, and the occasional kimono, milled around below the balcony, in the open garden with its large white tents and long tables full of little desserts.

 

Shuzo had sat with Sei, allowed himself to be introduced to the people immediately around them at the table, and then participated politely in conversation when Sei left to stand with his father as the cake was cut.

 

When lunch ended, and his boyfriend had failed to come back, caught up at his father’s table with a man with whom he had a peculiar family resemblance – had Sei ever mentioned an uncle? – Shuzo had excused himself and gone into the house. A bit of exploring on the ground floor, and he had found a little stairway that led up to this balcony. Tucked deep in the wall, it was a good place to see and not be seen. 

 

The glass of orange juice he had brought with him was balanced precariously on the dark wooden balustrade. Shuzo put his hands in his pockets, leaned back against the slender pillar behind him, and looked at the sky. An hour and a half of people-watching could get boring. But he sure as hell wasn’t going back down there. Polite, he could do. Social, he could do. This not knowing why he was even here – that was harder to stomach. 

 

“Nijimura-kun,” said a familiar-unfamiliar voice. Shuzo had heard it before. At the beginning of the party, when Sei led him inside the garden from the dining room. 

 

He pushed off from the pillar. Turned to face the man with Sei’s hair – the soft, slightly spiky edges, if not the colour – and precise facial structure. “Akashi-san.”

 

Akashi Masaomi surveyed him.

 

Shuzo returned the gaze. For a lack of any other response. He didn’t know what to think of Sei’s father. The man who had taught Sei that winning was everything. Who, if popular psychology was to be believed, was probably the root of the majority of Sei’s more autocratic, unreasonable tendencies.

 

And that new idea. In the car. About expecting only what should be expected.

 

What did Shuzo say to a man whom, in middle school, he had sometimes imagined punching in the face? The person who, when mentioned, brought a cold, proper cast to Sei’s face – like the leather on an expensive watch, the glass face.

 

Sei, in the end, had made himself. To think otherwise would be to condescend – to make Akashi Seijuro – shogi champion; student council president of every school he had attended; former captain of the Generation of the Miracles; and competitive, controlling, incomprehensible bastard – into nothing more than the product of circumstances and other people’s actions. And the person that Akashi Seijuro was – would never tolerate that.

 

Sei was Sei.

 

Shuzo said, politely, “Happy birthday.”

 

“You delivered your well-wishes when my son introduced us,” Akashi-san observed.

 

The ability to irritate must be a family gene. “It’s a nice party.”

 

“My brother arranged it.”

 

“You have a brother?” Shuzo said. The man Sei had been speaking too, then.

 

“Yuuto was in America until recently. With his husband and son.”

 

Shuzo took his right hand from his pocket. An instinctive action. An empty gesture.

 

Did Akashi-san _know_ – Shuzo felt the need to lock his expression into place. Freeze it.

 

“Father did not approve,” Akashi-san said. He turned his head, back towards the small stairway. A bird-like movement. “Well, then. Thank you for looking after Seijuro.” And then his feet shifted, turning left of the balcony towards a second set of stairs Shuzo had failed to notice earlier. Leading upwards. Probably to some more private part of the house. 

 

It occurred to Shuzo that, technically, a guest shouldn’t have wandered up here anyway. Little stairway, balcony from where you could see but not be seen – 

 

He ignored the prickle of conscience. Asked, before he lost the nerve, “Sei said –”

 

A flat brown gaze.

 

“He said that you told him something – ” What the fuck of a question was he even asking? And to his boyfriend’s _dad_. The words sputtered, died. Heat spread up the back of Shuzo’s neck, morphed into an itch beneath his skin. He shook his head. “It’s not important. I’m sorry. Have a – good birthday.”

 

Akashi-san’s footsteps were quiet. Also like his son.

 

The son who had come up the small stairway now. Was looking between Shuzo and the second set of stairs, clearly piecing together the events of the past few minutes.

 

Shuzo saved him the effort. “Your dad was here. You have an uncle. Two uncles. And a cousin.”

 

“A recent development,” Sei said. “You have been avoiding the party.”

 

“Since lunch ended.” And then, sharp. “Not what you expected from me?”

 

It should have looked ridiculous, Sei in a starched white shirt, black waistcoat, dark blazer and perfectly knotted tie. Who even wore this shit for a birthday party? Shuzo was dressed down in comparison, and he’d felt ridiculous when he looked at himself in the mirror.

 

But if anyone could look perfectly normal, he supposed it would have to be Akashi Seijuro. Sei didn’t look any different from when he was standing on the Rakuzan basketball court, jersey gleaming in the fluorescent light; sitting in the school cafeteria at lunch, uniform neatly pressed; lying on Shuzo’s bed, jacket off and shirt buttons half-undone, hair mussed from Shuzo’s fingers, red-gold eyes dilated.

 

They hadn’t fucked yet. Always got to that point, just past kissing, just when Shuzo thought they might do more – and then he would stop. Get off Sei, or pull back enough that Sei knew to give him some space.

 

Shuzo wasn’t sure himself. Why.

 

He had had sex before. Probably more than Sei. From what Shuzo could tell – though they hadn’t talked about it since that night in spring when Shuzo confessed for the second time and Sei accepted – Yamada had been Sei’s first experience of anything of a remotely romantic nature. Even screwed up – Shuzo’s free hand clenched, knuckles white – as Yamada’s intentions had been.

 

It would be perfectly natural to have sex. Jerking off at least, if Shuzo was worried about Sei not being ready for full-on fucking. And if Sei wanted more – well, Shuzo’s boyfriend would make that known himself. Akashi Seijuro was perfectly capable of directing his own sex life.

 

These unrelated things – they kept coalescing, lately. Joining up with each other, circling together in the forefront of Shuzo’s mind. Like crows. Or bright lights. Whatever metaphor was bloody appropriate.

 

The things Sachi had said. Self-pity, cowardice, acceptance. Akashi Masaomi’s measuring gaze; the familiar tone in his voice when he said his younger brother’s first name. Half-possessive, half-dismissive, as if the possession in itself was a thing to be expected. And at the same time – a line of caution, leather-smooth and glass-thin – as if – as if – the thing that was being looked upon, referred to, was a thing to be held precious. Infinitely so. 

 

Shuzo’s name in Sei’s mouth. That same tone. Said into the too-warm, too-close space of Shuzo’s bed as they pressed close together, faces turned just slightly away from each other. A pause for breath. A moment to think. Or not-think.

 

And Shuzo had been afraid.

 

Of – like his mother, and his father, and his aunt, and even Kou and Sachi at some point in time – losing it. That tone of voice. That sure, certain presence – just there, always there. 

 

If Shuzo took this step; if he asked for this final thing, this last unfulfilled component of a society-defined functional, official romantic relationship between him and Seijuro – would it happen? That second of time, in which Sei’s not-looking at him – in this moment an intimate, safe thing – became _not-looking_ at him. Shuzo, disappeared only to become that thing that he should be. A son, a nephew, a brother – the boy who had promised Sachi, when he should have known better, that everything would be fine. The stranger who shut up when his mother spoke, her voice low and bitter; who didn’t point out the holes in her argument, the flaws in her logic. The captain who had left Seijuro to fail by himself at Teiko, and refused to deal with the fall-out when he came back and transferred into Rakuzan. Because Seijuro could handle himself. And Shuzo had his own problems.

 

He was sick of it. His cowardice. His self-pity. Those things that Sachi had said. And this. This uncertainty. Hesitation. Dependence. Shuzo was himself. Not the sum, the product, of anything else.

 

“It is unclear to me,” Sei was saying, gaze narrowing, “what you think I meant when I explained matters to you in the car. However – ”

 

Glasses clinked below the balustrade where his orange juice still sat, thoroughly warm by now. Footsteps moved near the foot of the stairway leading down. An exchange of voices drifted up. A pair of servers, moving from the kitchen to the garden. And Sei’s voice – coolly aristocratic, reassuringly familiar.

 

Shuzo took his remaining hand from his pocket. Another empty gesture. “Come to my house. After. When your party’s done. We can finalise plans for the camp. You can stay the night.”

 

The sun was high in the sky, even two hours after noon. It slanted into the tucked-away little balcony. Picked out stripes of light and shadow from the wooden shafts in the balustrade, the column-shapes of the two pillars separating the balcony from the narrow corridor behind it.

 

Sei said, “You extended that invitation before. I refused. As I explained, I no longer have the need to –”

 

“I expect it.”

 

The light-and-shade pattern on the floor – Shuzo chose not to see it. Instead; the sun setting Sei’s hair on fire, the shadows sharpening the contours of his face and softening others.

 

Iron and smoke. Sei’s gaze was like that. Anger, a bit of surprise.

 

Shuzo could smile. Felt his own irritation reflected in it. Sei, in the car, saying things that Shuzo understood as – what? Sei drawing away. Removing himself. Because he thought Shuzo asked it of him, or he thought it a more prudent state of affairs. A more rational kind of relationship.

 

Fuck that.

 

“I expect it, Sei.”

 

The hole in his argument – expect only the things that _should_ be expected; this wasn’t something that should be expected – Sei let it go. A softening of his gaze. Iron and water. A calming of the rapid beating of blood in Shuzo’s head. The creeping, still-there edge of fear. “I will come,” he said.

 

 

 

The day Sekiguchi Toru met Yamada Isamu, it had been raining. Toru’s friends liked to use this fact as evidence that their relationship wasn’t meant to last. Not that their feelings were objective. Toru’s friends didn’t like Isamu. Thought he was a spoilt brat whose father coddled him too much, didn’t punish him when he screwed up, was letting him become the kind of person who acted the two-dimensional, bit-part villain in primetime dramas. Not even the main dish. Didn’t have the talent. The backbone.

 

These were things that Toru understood about his boyfriend. Isamu was spoilt. If indifference could be seen in that light. Isamu was two-dimensional. He certainly liked to act that way. It required less thinking. And Isamu lacked talent and backbone. By most definitions.

 

But what Sekiguchi Toru had seen in Yamada Isamu, on that day it had been raining, in a lonely sakura-laden park in Tokyo – less day than night, it had been, actually; that awkward time between evening and afternoon, when children were still in school and adults in work, and yet the world hung on lengthening shadows and a sinking sun, waiting, waiting – Toru hadn’t seen love in Isamu, or the evidence of being loved in the right way by the right person; he hadn’t seen depth; he hadn’t seen talent or backbone. Toru had seen a boy his age, dark-haired and dark-eyed, a camera limp in his hand, and head tilted upwards. Not toward the falling sakura petals, but toward the sky. An open bowl of a sky, high and gold and crimson-dark at the edges. Beautiful. A world in the palm of a hand. And the boy’s eyes were closed.

 

Watching him, Toru became aware. The pavement beneath his feet, aside. The spring-cold rain drumming into his scalp through the fabric of his hood; the sky above his head; the curl of his hands inside the pockets of his sweater. He became aware of a sound. Gentle, low, barely there. A recorder. A little kid, years younger than either Toru or the boy with the camera, sitting on a swing. The sound was clear, steady, if sometimes a bit too hard, a bit too soft, a bit choppy at the edges.

 

The song finished. The boy with the camera opened his eyes. Smiled. A sudden movement of his mouth.

 

The little kid on the swing jumped up. “Were you listening, Nii-san?”

 

“I couldn’t hear anything else,” his older brother replied.

 

What Toru saw – it wasn’t a person who was loved; it wasn’t someone with depth, or talent, or backbone. It wasn’t the aesthetics of the scene – sakura leaves, rain, wind, and spring – and it wasn’t kindness, or whatever else that Toru’s friends who actually listened to his account of that first meeting thought of when they tried to explain his relationship with Isamu to themselves.

 

It was that singular focus. The capacity, Toru thought in those moments when he was being brutally honest with himself, _to_ love. Instead of to be loved.

 

And months later, when that first encounter had turned into another chance meeting into deliberate get-togethers into dates and a relationship – after Toru had begun to understand the flip-side of that thing that had attracted him to Isamu in the beginning: this hatred for Akashi Seijuro, the brilliant, genius captain of Rakuzan’s basketball team, who, Isamu said, made everything that he loved above the game into a fucking joke, a _joke_ – Isamu pointed the camera at him in the privacy of Toru’s bedroom, in Toru’s always-empty house. And said, “I want to watch.”

 

Toru remembered it with the same clarity he remembered watching Isamu tilt his head up towards the open sky. Eyes closed, fingers loose around his camera strap.

 

Touching himself. Hand between his legs. Fisting his cock. Watching Isamu watching him. Or imagining it anyway. Isamu’s familiar dark gaze was hidden by the body of the camera; his fingers were tight around the stand.

 

Toru was talkative during sex. He had figured that out the first time he and Isamu did it, on Isamu’s bed in one of Isamu’s father’s mansions. A beautiful, equally empty house in Kyoto. Isamu had invited him over during a weekend. There hadn’t been candles. But the sheets were crisp and soft. And Isamu’s mouth on his neck had been reverent. Toru remembered saying things to him, incoherent and coherent, as Isamu let him press fingers inside him. Something neither of them had done.

 

Doing this, himself, in front of Isamu’s camera lens, almost five weeks later. These same incoherent and coherent things coming to mind, sometimes making it out from his mouth. Toru could feel the exposure, the isolation, like a brand on his skin.

 

And then Isamu had come out from behind the lens. The camera-light winked out. And Toru’s boyfriend was on top of him, kissing him. Something more intimate. Something better. Toru broke the kiss, buried his nose in Isamu’s hair where it curled, just slightly, over his ear. And licked the ear. A private joke. Isamu laughed.

 

A week later. This text, when Toru was in class. Curt. “We’re done.” And an attachment of the video.

 

Toru remembered putting up his hand. Slipping the phone into the pocket of his blazer as he did so. Walking, without hurrying, without slipping, to the bathroom down the hallway. Closing a stall door behind him. And pressing play.

 

And watching.

 

Himself. A humiliation.

 

A joke.

 

First, he had been angry.

 

And now. A day and a half after he had left Izuki and Hayama and Mayuzumi with the stated intention of going to see his boyfriend, he was standing outside Isamu’s Tokyo house. The whitewashed gate. A modest house beyond. Isamu’s mother, his boyfriend had explained once, had grown up in Tokyo. It was his father who lived in Kyoto. And so when Isamu visited his mother, it was to this home of hers he returned to and stayed in. This nondescript suburban house in a suburban neighbourhood.

 

Toru had chickened out for a day and a half. And then he had come here and pressed the doorbell. His throat was dry; his skin was cold.

 

Isamu was standing in front of him, face closed.

 

That day, with the camera, Toru had told himself that Isamu was looking at him, through the camera lens, the same way that he had listened to his younger brother play the recorder. That singular focus. That evidence of –

 

“Are you happy?” Toru said, before he could complete the thought. “You fucking _coward_.”

 

When he’d told those players from Rakuzan – Izuki’s friend, and Mayuzumi – that he knew about what Isamu had done, because Isamu had told him, and Toru had continued to date him, Toru understood. Because. Why had Isamu told him? That he’d gotten some some guys together and gone after a kid a year younger than him. Drugged that kid and beat him bloody. And the kid’s friend too, when the friend came to help. Beat them both. A common, digusting bully. The worst kind of person. Why tell Toru? Say the words, flat out, face closed like it was now, eyes bland, and waiting. Waiting for Toru to condemn him. To walk away.

 

Isamu opened his mouth.

 

Toru broke in. “I’m not done. You don’t get to do this.”

 

All of the words that had been building up in his head. Since the video. The text message. Curt, cold. We’re done.

 

“You don’t get to keep doing this.”

 

Isamu’s parents hated each other. His little brother, the boy with the flute, was back in boarding school. Some remote place in Tohoku. These houses, in Tokyo, in Kyoto, were always empty and large. At some point, Isamu had had basketball. And then Akashi Seijuro and the Generation of Miracles had taken that away.

 

Akashi Seijuro had a father, a boyfriend, friends, teammates, followers. Akashi Seijuro was Isamu’s father, Isamu’s mother, these successful, brilliant people who looked upon Isamu and saw nothing. Akashi Seijuro was the object of a twisted, unreasonable, intense hatred.

 

And Toru – Toru was a relationship.  Someone whom Isamu had taken a momentary, fleeting interest in. There had been others. Romantic and sexual, or casual and platonic. The odd teammate – maybe one or two of those who had joined in on the plan to drug and beat the shit out of a fifteen-year-old. Nijimura’s younger brother, even; Isamu had mentioned him a few weeks ago. Distraction. Collateral damage. People whom Isamu would pick up and drop when it suited him. And not just drop. Force to leave. Because Isamu needed people to walk away from him. Needed them to prove that Isamu’s fears were founded; that, in the end, people left. Or were never there at all.

 

All that twisted self-loathing. Textbook psychology. Inexcusable. All of those people who did not become the kind of person Isamu had become. Long before Toru ever entered his life, Isamu had screwed up. Gone off the rails. Slipped away before someone bothered to notice that he was going, then gone.

 

Toru didn't deserve the fall-out.

 

His throat was dry. His skin was cold. The sky was dark above his head, and his boyfriend was framed in the open doorway to a house Toru had never set foot inside. He had thought he would speak calmly. But his voice was vibrating. And vibrating.

 

And he thought: hadn’t he, himself, been unfair? Cruel. Loving someone because he wanted them to love _him_. Was that even love?

 

This feeling in his chest, like glass crushing, and crushing, and crushing together. The inability to look into Isamu’s face and really see his expression, instead of just the vague shape and outline of a nose, a set of eyes, a jaw.

 

Isamu’s feet moved. A half-second, between the last sentence that had come out of Toru’s mouth, and this next sentence.

 

This statement. “We’re done.”

 

Mouth in a thin line. “Toru.”

 

Glass crushed; broke. “We’re done,” Toru heard himself repeat. “I get to say it, this time.” And he dropped his head, turned from the door.

 

But before that. He had seen it. The expression on Isamu’s face.

 

The end of the driveway. The gate. A streetlamp. Another streetlamp. A third –

 

He stood, very still. Put his hands inside his pockets. And counted his breaths.

 

How fair was it? That Isamu would look at him like that.

 

 

 

“Someone’s here to see you,” Shuzo’s younger brother said, when Takayama-san had dropped them off at the gate to the house. Shuzo glanced at his boyfriend. Sei met his gaze, even and calm. “And,” Kou said, tone dropping from uncertain-confused to uncertain-hostile, “why the fuck’s he stopping here? And with a bag and every-”

 

Shuzo said, brusquely, “He’s staying over. In my room. Who’s here?”

 

Kou was wearing a black hoodie with the name of some indie band scrawled over it. His hands dug into the pockets in sullen response to Shuzo’s tone. “Akira’s older brother. And Akira. Don’t know why they’re here to see you. Akira’s my friend. Before he graduated Haramaku and moved to Rakuzan, anyway.”

 

Who was Akira? And the kid was being even brattier than usual. Shuzo opened his mouth to reprimand his brother. Bit his tongue at the last moment. Sachi had mentioned it the night before – that Kaa-san was determined that Kou stay in Tokyo for high school, while Kou was equally determined to leave. Abandoned by Shuzo and Sachi both, at home with Kaa-san on a weekend –

 

Sei said, “If you’re done, Kou-kun.”

 

“Who the hell let you call me– ” Kou began. Cut himself off.

 

Sei’s smile was thin.

 

The already deep and growing apprehension at having Sei here, in this house, clawed its way back to the forefront of Shuzo’s mind. He walked past Kou; the brat stepped out of his way, hunched his shoulders at having done so. His younger brother’s inferiority complex. The front door was open. Shoes off in the entryway, an automatic glance into the kitchen to see if his mother was home; she had taken up residence at the island table, as if Shuzo’s presence confined her there – and then into the living room.

 

He blinked. “Mochida.”

 

Mochida Akira, short dark hair and small for his age, stared at Shuzo, even more sullenly than Kou had. “You,” he spat.

 

“Akira,” said the person with him. Around Shuzo’s age. The same dark hair and eyes as Shuzo’s new first-year kouhai. “We came here to apologize to Nijimura.”

 

“You came here to apologize. I did the right –”

 

Not a snap. But cold. “Be quiet.” And then to Shuzo. “Nijimura Shuzo, am I right?”

 

“Right,” Shuzo said. “Who are you?”

 

“Mochida Reiji, Akira’s older brother.”

 

Sei was at his shoulder. A familiar presence.

 

Mochida Akira surged to his feet; his brother caught his elbow, but Akira shrugged off the grip. Focused his stare on Sei. An intense dislike. “What the fuck are you doing here?”

 

Shuzo said, flat, “Watch your mouth, kid.”

 

“I don’t need to. I’m leaving.”

 

Mochida Reiji, shoulders tense in his dark shirt, opened his mouth to speak.

 

Sei’s tone forestalled further conversation. He stepped past Shuzo. For a moment, Shuzo was distracted by the way the fluorescent lamps in his living room shone on his boyfriend’s hair, made it look like living fire. And what the fuck was he saying?

 

Sei said, “Mochida Akira. The source of the rumour regarding Shuzo.”

 

Shuzo’s arousal shut down. A bucket of cold water. Ice and ash. He thought of the loud girl, the class president’s best friend. Face pushed into Shuzo’s space, demanding, as if she a right to know, “Is it true?”

 

What the fuck had she expected him to say.

 

“Now you know my name,” the kid was saying. Satisfied. Smug. Shuzo watched his mouth move. Ice and ash. Dry ice; cold ash. “Now you know –”

 

Shuzo opened his mouth. The irritation, the unease, from before – snapping together into something hard, iron – flaring –

 

Sei flicked a look at him. Stiffened. “Silence.”

 

Mochida Reiji flinched. His younger brother paled.

 

Shuzo had nothing to say. He looked away. Centred himself.

 

“Is it true?” That girl had said. Shuzo hadn’t bothered, before then, to even remember her name.

 

And, right. That was why it had gotten to him. What the girl, the class president’s best friend, had said. Kaa-san had said the same thing. The same exact words. After Shuzo came home, after those thirty-six hours of walking the streets of Los Angeles, and told his aunt, waiting on the sofa of their living room, what he had decided his father’s fate should be.

 

Kaa-san hadn’t been there. Kaa-san never liked the difficult things.

 

That wasn’t fair.

 

Sei was here, in this house. Mochida Akira was the source of the rumour. The truth. And Shuzo was done running away.

 

But. In this moment, he looked into Mochida Akira’s face, the same way he had looked into his mother’s face when she came home and said to him, “Is it true?” – and he was – he said nothing.

 

Shuzo needed to deal with his own problems. He breathed in deep. Said, “Apology accepted. You can go.”

 

“I’m not going to apologize for the truth,” Mochida Akira said.

 

Shuzo only looked at him.

 

Mochida Reiji took his brother’s shoulder. Firmly; this time, he refused to be shaken off. “Thank you. We’ll leave.”

 

“No,” said the brat. His face was still pale, his mouth thin. But his tone was flat. “You know why I did it? It’s because the truth is important. And if I can’t make people see the truth about you, you arrogant _shit_ – ” A jerky movement in Sei’s direction. A half-step. “I’m going to make them see the truth about the people around you. Then they’ll know what kind of person you are by association. They’ll know. And they’ll hate you, like they should. They’ll see.”

 

Sei’s gaze widened. He made opponents on the court kneel with that look.

 

Shuzo said, curt, “Preach it to someone who cares. Now get –”

 

Kou said, “What truth?”

 

Akira looked behind Sei and Shuzo. Stiffened. Before, his body had been deliberately loose, aggressive. Now it shrunk into itself. “Nothing,” he said, almost too quickly. Flushed when he did so, gaze darting to Sei. “Something.” And then, “Kou, you don’t understand yet.”

 

A snap between syllables. A break. “What. Truth?” In the half-shadow of the corridor between the living room and the kitchen, Shuzo couldn’t make out his younger brother’s expression. But he could see the clench of Kou’s jaw. The way Kou was holding himself.

 

Mochida Reiji said, quiet, “Tell him, Akira.”

 

“Shut the fuck up,” Akira said. To his brother, but his glare was directed at Sei. Flicking between Sei and Kou. He was still speaking to Mochida Reiji. “You’re the one who makes the least sense, Nii-san. Akashi and his freaky bastard friends did that to your team – completely humiliated all of you – and you just took it. You and Shigehiro-nii-san. Just took it, and then quit basketball, like that. Because of them. Because they thought it would _fun_. Takeshi –”

 

“Your primary school friend,” Mochida Reiji said, disapproving. “Takeshi-kun likes to gossip. Whatever you heard –”

 

“He was a backbencher at Teiko! He heard it; he didn’t make it up. The Generation of Miracles, who won, who quit nothing, who became bloody first-year captains and aces and _lights_ at bloody top-end schools – for what? Deciding before the match to manipulate the score 111-11. Because they were bored. _Because they thought winning like that would be_ –”

 

“Stop talking,” Shuzo said. Couldn’t hear the tone of his own voice.

 

Mochida Reiji’s composure had cracked, just a little, “Akira, even then, you had no right –”

 

“You used me,” Kou said.

 

“I had every right. Anyone decent has a right. And Kou, you don’t know Akashi. You don’t get it. Akashi deserves it. And it’s not like your brother doesn’t –” Talking over both Shuzo’s brother and Mochida Reiji. A snatching at air and sound. “Deserve it too! He captained the Generation of Miracles, he’s fucking their crazy captain, he screwed you over too, Kou!”

 

The noise was overwhelming. Shuzo’s temper came to life; frayed; snapped. He brought the flat of his hand back, slammed it against the wall by the open archway. “Shut up, the lot of you!”

 

A beat. Quiet.

 

And then. “You don’t get to order me – ” Akira began.

 

Shuzo’s hand ached. He dropped it back to his side. “Keep talking, brat.”

 

Mochida Reiji’s back straightened. But he said nothing. His younger brother closed his mouth.

 

Sei’s own quiet, unobtrusive as silk, wasn’t a commanded silence. It was tactical. At this moment in time, Shuzo refused to read its meaning. 

 

From the corner of his eye, Shuzo watched Kou duck his head, then turn sharply, take the stairs two steps at a time. A door slammed on the second floor.

 

Akira’s weight shifted.

 

Shuzo said, “Follow him, and I’ll sock you in the face.”

 

Crisp, methodical. One thing at a time.

 

Kaa-san had come back. Early morning. Knocked on the door to Shuzo’s bedroom and said, when he opened it, “Your aunt spoke to me. Is it true?”

 

His mother was a tall woman. Shuzo had matched her height a few months ago.

 

It was summer. She was wearing a simple blue dress. Flat shoes. A shopping bag over each arm. The kitchen was downstairs, and she hadn’t bothered to drop them there before coming to Shuzo’s room.

 

“Tell me,” Kaa-san said. “That you aren’t this kind of person.”

 

What kind of person was that, had been Shuzo’s immediate reaction. Immediate question. A childish come-back.

 

“Tell me, Shuzo,” his mother said.

 

Shuzo couldn’t be a child. Not about this. He put his hands behind his back. Was painfully aware that he was dressed in his sleeping clothes, a simple shirt and track pants, and that his aunt had gotten up from the sofa in the living room and walked away, when Shuzo told her his decision. His answer.

 

He said, “It’s what Tou-san would –”

 

“Be quiet,” his mother said. Sudden, shaking. “ _Be quiet_.”

 

Her hand twitched at her side. Shuzo thought, for a single, blank, uncomprehending moment, that she would hit him.

 

And then she breathed deep. And turned away from him. “We will talk. Later.”

 

“I’ve decided,” he said. Flat. Because even then, he had been himself. Not a child picked on by adults. Not a victim. Shuzo knew, himself, that he had been – he was – more than those things. A basketball player. A former captain. An older brother. A son. And he had made his decision, as himself.

 

First, he would explain. And then Kaa-san would understand.

 

One thing at a time.

 

To Mochida Akira and his unhappy older brother, Shuzo said, “We’re done. Leave now. And you,” to Akira, “leave Kou alone.”

 

When Shuzo said that – I’ve decided – his mother had slapped him. Hard across the face. Shuzo had frozen. Surprise. He had seen the first, abortive movement; the possibility had, briefly and blankly, come to mind. But he hadn’t – really –

 

Mochida Reiji bowed. Graceful and low. And then he tugged Akira from the room, bypassing Shuzo, who stepped out of the way. Sei hadn’t moved. Of course. Akashi Seijuro didn’t give way. It almost made Shuzo smile.

 

Until he saw his boyfriend’s expression.

 

The front door closed. A sharp clip of sound. A simultaneous narrowing and expanding of space. Alone with Akashi Seijuro. And alone with Sei.

 

Shuzo knew, now, what had happened with Meiko.

 

He felt tired; it had been a tiring-as-shit day. How long had he tried to avoid knowing, for sure, what the Generation of Miracles had done? Four, five months.

 

What had been the point? Now that it was all out in the open, it changed nothing.

 

“It doesn’t matter,” he said, to the distant iron in the familiar, mismatched gaze.

 

“It does not,” Sei said. A statement. He had wanted Shuzo to say something else.

                                                                            

The living room was rounded at the edges. Safe for a child to run around in, the real estate agent had said when Shuzo accompanied his mother to the viewing. Shuzo remembered saying that there weren’t any small children in the family.

 

Kaa-san had said nothing at all. But she had lingered in the living room for a beat longer than necessary. After the agent had already suggested they move on to the kitchen instead.

 

An open space. An unfamiliar one – how much time had Shuzo spent here since moving back from America?

 

Shuzo’s bedroom at Rakuzan, Sei’s bedroom – they were more familiar, more intimate locations.

 

Maybe that was why, for a moment, Shuzo looked into his boyfriend’s face and didn’t know what he should say. Resented Sei for it.

 

The expectations he didn’t know how to meet. 

 

Seijuro’s gaze flickered. Crimson-gold.

 

The air in the room was close and warm. The shut windows. The memory of tension.

 

Shuzo breathed in deep. 

 

 

 

As Sachi-san and Kou-kun helped their brother with dinner, Seijuro reflected, from his seat at the kitchen table – forbidden by Sachi-san to help because he was a guest – that

it was hardly as if, one morning, he had woken up and realised that Shuzo was going to leave him.

 

That it would happen was something he should always have known. Shuzo was a third-year. Of course he would retire from the basketball team, focus on his university exams. It was the same as with all the other regulars on the basketball team. Chihiro, Reo, Kotaro, Eikichi, Shuzo. They would all disperse to their different universities. Perhaps they would continue playing basketball in the university league. Perhaps they would would. The Rakuzan team did not cultivate an overly friendly atmosphere, less so, even, than the Generation of Miracles in the short time before talent – the fear of it – overtook friendship, fostered resentment instead.

 

After Shuzo entered university, perhaps until Seijuro himself enrolled in Todai. That was how long that particular relationship – its temporal and social roots extending before and outside of Rakuzan – might last. However, it would eventually end. As it had after the Teiko’s third-years retired, their departure the final paving of the way for the Generation of Miracles. (More truthfully, before then, when Seijuro’s senpai had given up the captaincy; Nijimura had abandoned him then already.)

 

Seijuro did not resent Shuzo. He had made his own mistakes, just as Shintaro had, and Tetsuya, and Daiki, and Ryota, and Atsushi. Head Coach Shirogane Kozo, Coach Sanada Naoto, Satsuki, those former rivals, friends, and teammates who had been blinded by brilliance far above what should be possible – _im_ possible, miraculous – had played their parts. But, in the end, what was, was. What had been, had been. And there was nothing Akashi Seijuro needed less than someone to blame for his mistakes.

 

At the same time, Akashi Seijuro did not make the same mistakes.

 

Demanding that Shuzo allow him to visit his home had represented the seizing of an opportunity. The making of a rational decision, in light of his father’s comments many months ago. It would not do to invest further in a relationship that showed all the signs of taking the same course as that of his parents’. The wasted time and effort could not be justified. And therefore, it was necessary that Seijuro assess his relationship with Shuzo. Investigate if it would stand the test of overlapping, joined spheres of social existence. If they might, one day, find a balance between trust and independence, and companionship and dependence.

 

But Chihiro’s questioning on the train – why demand a sleepover, like a child; and Seijuro’s answer – he would not be like his father. And Father’s indulgence of Seijuro’s refusal to attend university abroad, on the basis of an assumption that Seijuro had friends, a romantic interest, even, for whom he might wish to stay.

 

Of his friends’ departure, of Shuzo’s departure – Seijuro had been afraid. Acted in fear, in self-preservation. Chihiro had seen this. Seijuro’s father had seen this. Seijuro himself now saw this.

 

An unforgivable lapse in judgment.

 

He would not make the same mistake again.

 

An empty plate was set in front of him. Followed by a spoon. Shuzo’s presence – familiar to Seijuro as a clear, commanding voice cutting through open space; running footsteps on hard court; warm, strong fingers closing, exactly, perfectly, around a pass, before releasing the ball at once into a dribble; a wry, affectionate half-smile and gentle, iron gaze; mercurial and reliable, protective and indifferent, Shuzo in all of his permutations – woke Seijuro from his thoughts.

 

“You’re thinking,” his partner said. “That’s always bad.”

 

Three more plates. Three more spoons. Sachi-san, at the stove-top, was ladling curry into a large, deep, blue-edged ceramic bowl, and attempting at the same time to engage her younger brother in conversation. Kou-kun was unresponsive.

 

Shuzo sat across from him. He had taken Seijuro up to his bedroom earlier. Changed into a set of clothes – a thin jacket, faded shirt, and old shorts – that Seijuro had seen him wear in his room at Rakuzan. And then they had come downstairs to the kitchen.

 

Seijuro allowed himself to observe the way in which the fluorescent lighting in the room caught Shuzo’s eyes. Brought out the hint of blue inside the grey. Aesthetically; it was beautiful.

 

Shuzo perceived something in Seijuro’s expression. His back straightened – it was, Seijuro had come to believe, an automatic response. Appreciation made Shuzo feel vulnerable. It was a common reaction. Most people were thrown off by attention. Praise. Looked for it, incessantly, and yet, when it was granted them, did not know what to do with the opportunity.

 

Shuzo was not common; Seijuro had known this for a long time.

 

Low, flat. “What was that about, earlier? Teiko. What did you want me to say?”

 

Akashi Seijuro did not run from an issue. He did not manoeuvre around it; he did not deceive, or lie. He met Shuzo’s gaze. The clear, deep grey, lightened, in this moment, with a whisper-suggestion of white-blue. Aesthetically, it was –

 

Seijuro said, “Thank you for inviting me into your home, Shuzo.”

 

Two, three, months ago, Seijuro had told Shuzo that he was talentless. Though the remark had been made from petty childishness more than a desire to express an undeniable truth, it was, in fact, the reality. Relative to the Generation of Miracles, Nijimura Shuzo had little to offer the world of basketball. Outside that world – in studies, in friendships, in personality, his performance ranged from ordinary to unexceptionally excellent. A leader, but not a genius, a monster, a miracle.

 

Shuzo was an individual of little memorable talent. Ordinary, if reasonable, accomplishment. But he was Shuzo. This, Seijuro understood.

 

And so he expected it, that Shuzo read something in Seijuro’s words, his face. An indifference, perhaps. A cynicism. A coldness. Certainly, a dismissal. His fingers, resting loosely on the kitchen table, inches away from Seijuro’s plate, curled. Just a moment. And then relaxed. Shuzo did not look away.

 

“If you were anyone else, Sei, I would punch you in the face,” Shuzo said.

 

To the statement was attached little discernible emotion.

 

Seijuro paused.

 

A key turned in a door. Sachi-san tensed, then forcibly relaxed. Seijuro caught the movement only because it greatly resembled her older brother’s just a moment before. And then she said, to Kou-kun, “Get the door. Kaa-san’s home.”

 

“You get it,” Kou-kun bit off. “Or she can let herself in, can’t she? Being a grown-ass woman and all.”

 

Chair legs scraped back. Shuzo slipped his hands into his pockets. “I’ll get it. Stop squabbling. And Kou, wash your mouth out.”

 

 

 

Seijuro found that Yamazaki Aiko-san was in appearance very similar to her children. The same dark hair, defined features, air of cool practicality. Even the same ever-present edge of authority – as if she belonged to and deserved command. The only difference was the gaze. Yamazaki-san’s was warm, bright, brown. It was not flat, deep, a storm waiting, always, on the edge of clarity or violence.

 

Shuzo introduced Seijuro to his mother as his boyfriend. Blunt, straightforward.

 

Yamazaki-san accepted this without comment. Her behaviour was polite if cool. She directed the usual questions toward Seijuro. School, sport, family. She spoke very little to her sons and daughter. As this continued, Seijuro noticed that Shuzo’s sister was eating with unnecessary aggression, her fingers tight around the spoon in her hand.

 

Shuzo and Kou-kun were focused on their respective plates. 

 

At one point, Yamazaki-san asked Seijuro what his plans were, for university.

 

Seijuro said, “I will eventually take over the running of my father’s business. But before that, I intend to pursue a professional career in basketball.”

 

“That’s lovely,” Yamazaki-san said.

 

Seijuro’s patience was quickly coming to an end. Still, he controlled himself. Shuzo would not appreciate disrespect of his mother, however intolerably vapid she happened to be.

 

However, any polite response he could issue was interrupted by the loud clatter of a spoon onto a plate.

 

Sachi-san said, bright and false, “That is lovely, Akashi-san. What are you planning to do, Nii-san?”

 

Shuzo froze.

 

Kou-kun’s head snapped up. He stared at his sister.

 

Their mother’s lips pressed together. She looked at her plate. “Yes, Shuzo,” she said, after a moment, clearly forced. “Medicine, was it? Or pharmaceutical science. Your teacher at West Ranch told me. Of course, you should aim for a university in Japan now. No need to attend one in America.”

 

“West Ranch was a year ago,” Sachi-san said.

 

“Sachi,” Shuzo said. Authoritative. Seijuro didn’t need to hear it to read the additional, silent question in his former captain’s face. What are you doing?

 

Seijuro kept his silence. Just as with disrespect of Shuzo’s mother, interference in what was clearly a family dispute would not be welcome. 

 

Sachi-san smiled. It brought to mind the way Shuzo had used to smile when he dragged Shogo to practice from either the arcade or a maid café. “It’s weird if only Akashi-san and Kaa-san are talking. We should all join in, or it’s not a conversation.” As she spoke, she tugged smooth the long sleeves of her navy sweater. Picked up her spoon again. “And anyway you’re a third-year now. Shouldn’t we talk about your plans for the future? Since we’re a family and all.”

 

“Yes, of course,” said their mother. An echo, though she was echoing nothing. A blandness of sound.

 

Kou-kun’s chair scraped back. “I’m going to the bathroom.”

 

Sachi-san’s gaze refused to waver from her older brother’s scowling face. “Go ahead. We’ll be right here when you get back.”

 

“Medicine or pharmaceutical science,” said Yamazaki-san. She, like Seijuro earlier, clearly wished for this conversation to be over.

 

Seijuro could see the moment that Shuzo shut down. Dropped his scowl in favour of an expression Seijuro had seen him wear often as captain in Teiko, and then as Seijuro’s vice-captain in Rakuzan. A combination of controlled indifference and easy, earned confidence. “Neither. I changed my mind.”

 

“What, then?” Sachi-san said.

 

“Maths,” Shuzo said. “Or programming. Haven’t really decided yet.”

 

“That’s nice,” Yamazaki-san said. Her voice had acquired a level of strain. “I’m sure you’ll figure it out soon.” And then, with little subtlety, “Do you do anything outside of school, Akashi-kun. Other than basketball.”

 

“Shogi and riding, Yamazaki-san,” Seijuro answered, succinctly.

 

Sachi-san said, “I swim, Akashi-san. Kou listens to indie bands. And did you know that Nii-san used to learn karate? And we all played table tennis. Our father taught us.”

 

“That’s enough, Sachi,” said Yamazaki-san.

 

“What’s enough?” Sachi-san said. She put her spoon down again. Picked it up. Unlike Shuzo, she fidgeted in states of agitation and aggression.

 

Shuzo would not like it if Seijuro interfered.

 

“Talking about your father at the dinner table –” Yamazaki-san said.

 

Sachi-san’s voice rose. Vibrated. “I’m not talking about Tou-san. I’m talking about us. Except, clearly, you’ve no interest in us, Kaa-san. And especially, you’ve no interest in Nii-san. Because you want Kou to stay here with you in Tokyo, don’t you? And you included me in that little Skype call where you told us, and not Nii-san, that you were going to fucking dis- – ”

 

“Kaa-san’s right,” Shuzo said. Sharp and solid. “That’s enough. We’ve got a guest here, if you haven’t forgotten. And watch your language. We talked about this before.”

 

Shuzo’s sister stood up. A controlled movement. Her chair slid back without much noise at all. “I talked about it, Nii-san.” Seijuro understood she wasn’t referring to her language. “You said you would think about what I said. And, obviously, you haven’t, if you’re still letting Kaa-san treat you – and us – like we don’t exist. Except when it’s convenient for her – when she wants company, or justification.”

 

“I am your mother,” Yamazaki-san began, coldly.

 

“Then bloody _act_ like it.”

 

Shuzo’s face twisted. Imperceptible.

 

Seijuro felt himself tense. In a moment, he would –

 

And then Shuzo banged his open palm on the table. Said, without looking at his sister, “Sit down and shut up. Now, brat.”

 

The air was thick. A knotted, fraying rope.

 

Sachi-san sat down.

 

Yamazaki-san spoke. Her face was bland. “Akashi-kun. You said that your father was a businessman. And your mother? Both your parents must be quite accomplished, to have such a talented son.”

 

Perhaps, earlier, what Shuzo had seen in Seijuro’s expression – indifference, cynicism, dismissal – it was the same as what he saw in his mother’s on a daily basis. A reasoned understanding, the crux of which was that Shuzo and his siblings did not matter.

 

That Seijuro should resemble this vapid woman in any way was unacceptable.

 

Seijuro would secure his presence in Shuzo’s life; he would not hurt him in doing so.

 

Seijuro said, “My mother died. When I was very young.”

 

A pause. “Ah, a car accident?”

 

Yamazaki-san, Seijuro decided, was of that rare class of people who preferred to write the stories of others in order to ensure that their own was unique. Unlived, and, therefore, incomprehensible.

 

“Illness,” Seijuro said. “She died here in Tokyo.”

 

Shuzo’s first instinct when it came to a challenge was never to back down. As long as Seijuro held his gaze and did not look away, Shuzo would not either.

 

“Is that so?” said Yamazaki-san. The strain had returned to her voice. An undermining of the way in which she had chosen to perceive the world. “How coincidental. My husband, also –”

 

Seijuro said, smoothly, deliberately, “Yes, I heard. Shuzo was captain of the basketball team during my first year at Teiko. And then he retired early, and I became captain. He informed me that it was because of his father’s illness.”

 

“Nii-san is responsible that way,” Sachi-san said. More subdued than earlier, and she made no move to leave the table, but the words were just as pointed.

 

“Yes,” Yamazaki-san said. “Of course.” More than vapid; angry.

 

The expression on Shuzo’s face; a mix of fury – at Seijuro’s presumption – and surprised, reluctant gratitude.

 

 

 

The family withdrew after dinner, Yamazaki-san into her laptop at the kitchen table; Sachi-san and Kou-kun, who had never returned from the bathroom, to the living room; and Shuzo and Seijuro upstairs. After Shuzo returned from his shower, hair dark with water, towel draped over his shoulders, they discussed the training camp. The camp itself would begin on Tuesday. The practice match with Seirin would be on Wednesday. 

 

Seijuro would see Tetsuya before then, of course. On Monday, Seijuro planned to attend another friendly match with his former Teiko teammates. As was becoming the pattern, Ryota had been the one to invite him. More out of the ordinary, it was to be only the Generation of Miracles.

 

There was no reason to mention the meeting in his conversation with Shuzo.

 

Around ten o’clock, the plans and game videos were put away. Shuzo switched off the lights, pulled Seijuro into a kiss, mouths closed and then open, which turned into more kissing, heavier and messier. Shuzo’s fingers closed over Seijuro’s wrists, holding them against the dark blue sheets; Seijuro allowed it. Their legs were tangled, their breathing quiet but audible in the warm dark. Seijuro broke the kiss for a moment, leaned up on his elbows to press his mouth to Shuzo’s skin. The juncture between neck and shoulder. A slow, edged bite. Shuzo permitted the action, as he tended to do when there was no basketball practice the next day – no occasion when someone could be reasonably expected to see. Seijuro listened as his partner’s breath quickened. Became a rasp, a frequency, of sound.

 

And then Shuzo said, voice apparently steady but with a thin, hairline crack, from arousal and another emotion, “Let’s fuck.”

 

Seijuro closed his eyes. A moment. And then he dragged his tongue once over the mark he had made on Shuzo’s skin, tugged at the grip on his wrists at the angle that Shuzo knew to release him. They lay beside each other on Shuzo’s bed. A larger one than those provided in the dormitories at Rakuzan; the space between their fingers on the sheets was a wider one that Seijuro was accustomed to. But, still, Seijuro could hear the cadence of Shuzo’s breathing, feel the familiar warmth of his near presence.

 

Weight shifted. Shuzo, climbing off the bed. “Fuck,” he said. A curse, this time. “That was stupid.”

 

Seijuro sat up, folded his legs under himself. “You have not wished to engage in sex until now.”

 

The crack was gone. Instead, Shuzo’s tone was ironically flat. “So now we need to discuss it?”

 

Shuzo, beside him in the car on the way from the Akashi family home, had been unusually quiet. Seijuro let him be. Watched the highway instead. As it curved up, in the wide sweep of the windscreen was little more than gravel, the bumpers of cars, a flash of lamplight.

 

And then it levelled out. Gravel and car-bumpers made way for the evening sky. The road dipped. The world opened.

 

Shuzo’s bedroom, in contrast, was dark. Seijuro’s eyes had adjusted, and yet his vice-captain was a silhouette at the foot of the bed.

 

Shuzo said, “I invited you over.”

 

“I demanded it,” Seijuro corrected.

 

“And I would let you do something just because you demanded it. Who the hell do you think I am?”

 

Shuzo’s aunt had visited Rakuzan, the week before; she had upset him. And Seijuro remained in the dark as to the reason why.

 

Shuzo had said that Teiko did not matter.

 

Ryota messaged Seijuro, once a week. Shintaro played online shogi with him possibly once every four days. Atsushi, Tetsuya, and Daiki were silent. It was both better and exactly as Seijuro had estimated it would be.

 

Atsushi had made it clear, that day two years ago. When he challenged Seijuro in front of their teammates. The talent of the Generation of Miracles, their overwhelming ability to seize victory – Seijuro must either match it, _lead_ it, or be left behind.

 

Seijuro thought, momentarily, that it would have been convenient to have Shintaro with him now. The tortoise was a calming presence. Seijuro was reminded of shogi and lettuce leaves when he looked upon Shintaro. But Shintaro was at Seijuro’s father’s Tokyo house for the moment. As were Tetsuya, Daiki, Atsushi, and Ryota. Father, and his revelations about Seijuro’s mother and their deceptively loving relationship. Yuuto-oji-san, who had but recently injected himself back into the family fold, and who looked upon Seijuro with a mixture of instant affection and remote, remembered, injury.

 

There was only Seijuro, and Shuzo.

 

The window lit up. A car’s headlights. A rumbling engine. Shuzo’s head shifted. Eyes flicking left. An instinctive response to the light, the sound.

 

Seijuro loved him.

 

Therefore. As evenly as he had spoken to Yamazaki-san during dinner – Shuzo needed an explanation; he did not need to be hurt – “I believe we should outline the parameters of this relationship.”

 

Slowly, “What.”

 

Repetition was pointless. Seijuro waited.

 

“What the hell – this is about your expectations thing. Isn’t it?” Shuzo’s hand lifted, jerky, sudden, then dropped. An abortive movement. His head bent a little.

 

Seijuro could not allow him to misunderstand. “I do not mean to insult you –”

 

“The way you say it,” Shuzo snapped. “It’s like you don’t expect _anything_. You don’t expect anything from me.”

 

“That is not –”

 

“This shit about visiting my house – you, vacillating like a damn child about it all.”

 

Caution fractured. Anger struck like a rod of ice against stone. Seijuro’s temper rose. He would speak.

 

Shuzo cut forward. Sharp, unyielding. “And just now, Teiko. You wanted me to say something, and I didn’t say it. I can’t bloody read your mind, Sei! Tell me if –”

 

“Tell you,” Seijuro said.

 

The lash of words drew up short. Shuzo’s gaze, the furious heat in it, flicked from violence into cold – not clarity, but a struggle towards it. A reassessment. Just as if Shuzo were on the court, his drive locked down, opponents marking him and no obvious way around them. 

 

Seijuro removed himself from the bed. His feet were cold on the ground. There was no carpet, no rug. The floor was bare. Moonlight washed shadows under the desk, the bed, the wardrobe on the left of the room. The space in-between was larger than it was in the Rakuzan dormitories.

 

Seijuro set about making himself presentable. As he did so, he said, each word designed to bite, “Tell you, because, certainly, you do me the same courtesy. Shuzo.”

 

Somewhere in the house, an object crashed. A hard thump, followed by another one. Hollower. A wall, and then a floor. Sachi-san’s voice shouted her younger brother’s name. A door opened, banged shut, seeming to vibrate on its hinges.

 

Shuzo remained still. A silhouette, steadily becoming clearer. Seijuro could see his face. The outline of his shoulders as they hunched, briefly, and then forcibly relaxed.

 

Seijuro’s father looked at Yuuto-oji-san as if he were both an old, framed photograph; and the view seen through the windscreen of a car as a highway road levelled out, began to dip. A moment in time. A breath. One that, though frozen and past, or fluid – leaving, departing – and present, was at once familiar, anticipated; and foreign, unexpected. And through all of that – aesthetically – infinitely – 

 

Seijuro’s shirt clung to his skin. It was too warm in the room. The moonlight rested on Shuzo’s hair, swept down the line of his nose, his jaw, his shoulder, and seized upon the grey of his gaze. Where Seijuro had bitten a mark into his skin – it was visible. Shuzo shifted. The muscles in his arms tensed. He would move, or speak.

 

Seijuro’s father looked at his younger brother, and it was as if – the ground made way for the sky; and the world opened.

 

If he had looked at Seijuro’s mother the same way – and if he had, then the moment in which he had stopped – Seijuro could not remember.

 

“I need to go,” Shuzo said, into the quiet. “We’ll – talk later.” He shook his head. Snatched his jacket from where they had, at some point, discarded it on the floor. Abrupt, crisp motions. “If we talk at all. Fuck. I’m going.”

 

The bedroom door opened; it did not slam, but shut.

 

Seijuro turned towards the closed windows. The road outside was empty, quiet.

 

 

 

“It’s always about you,” Kou said.

 

Shuzo had followed his brother to the playground two blocks across from the house. He’d told Sachi to stay behind; neither of his siblings needed to be out this late at night.

 

He felt his fingers clench at his sides. “What –”

 

Kou had grown in the past year. When he pushed himself into Shuzo’s space, toe-to-toe, face flushed, Shuzo became very aware of this. That his younger brother was now less than half a head shorter than him. “It’s always about you! This past year, Kaa-san, because of Tou-san, what you did. Yamada-san, even if he was a bloody creep. He was useful for getting into concerts and stuff, but I bet he was only interested in me because I’m related to you. And Akira too. I was friends with Akira. We were in the music club togther, and still, it was about you. You and Akashi-san.”

 

Shuzo was cold. It was the night air. He opened his mouth to speak.

 

Kou’s face was half-dark with shadow. The moonlight was at their feet. The street was silent. “And, even then, I know it’s not fair for me to say that. Because it’s not like you asked for it, is it, Nii-chan.”

 

Sei’s teeth on his skin; the memory was still bright and branding. And the accusation in his voice, just as clear, just as sharp, as he turned Shuzo’s hypocrisy back on him. Tell me, because of course you do me the same courtesy.

 

Sei didn’t know yet, that Kaa-san was disowning Shuzo.

 

Shuzo had learned about Teiko’s final match from a stranger, only today.

 

And Kou’s unhappiness, the desperate flatness Shuzo could see clawing away in the darkness of his younger brother’s face – like Sachi’s cold, hard anger; don’t promise that; I talked about it, you said you would think about it; you’re letting her treat us like we don’t exist – Shuzo had closed his eyes to it. His younger brother. His sister. Akashi Seijuro and the kouhai he had left behind.

 

Like the Teiko coaches, like the other middle-school third-years, like his parents and his uncle and his aunt, like even Sachi, Kou, Sei, and the rest of the Generation of Miracles – Shuzo had been selfish. 

 

The difference between trust and independence, and willful blindness, abandonment.

 

Kou said, “I wanted to be better. Well, I can’t. You didn’t ask for this, Nii-chan, and I still hate you. I still – really –”

 

 

 

It was the sports hall where Teiko’s first-string basketball team held their daily practices. At one end of the school compound, connected by a long corridor to the second sports hall and the main buildings. Seijuro had not stepped foot inside for a year and two months. Since that day when the five of them, excluding Tetsuya, stood in the centre of the court and promised to meet again.

 

The promise had been kept. They had played each other in the high school tournaments. Seijuro, as he had known he would, had won. At the Inter-High. At the Winter Cup. At the Spring Tournament.

 

On the first day of Golden Week, the hall was empty. The first string were already on their weeklong away training camp. The second and third strings were playing practice matches against other schools in the Tokyo area.

 

Seijuro remembered all of these details, which he as vice-captain and then as captain had once had to know intimately, with a feeling of remote distance. The same distance that he had felt from Shuzo, the night before, after Shuzo’s return from chasing after his wayward younger brother.

 

Shintaro’s voice brought him back into the present. Immediate, and disapproving. “You brought the tortoise.”

 

Daiki’s wide-eyed stare flicked between Shintaro, who was adjusted his glasses, and Shintaro, who was sitting in the palm of Seijuro’s hand and eating a lettuce leaf. “What the _fuck_.”

 

“Language, Daiki,” Seijuro admonished.

 

“Why,” Shintaro said. Formally. _Naze_. It indicated irritation.

 

Ryota was laughing, in the background. The volume and duration bespoke an increased lung capacity, since the Spring Tournament, that Seijuro would have to incorporate into his calculations for the Inter-High.

 

It was peculiar. Even with Shintaro’s obvious annoyance at the presence of Shintaro, Seijuro felt lighter than he had in days.

 

And then Ryota said, between gasps of laughter, “I bet Midorimacchi’s really regretting not going to Rakuzan with you now, Akashicchi! He would have found some way to get rid of all your pets. What are they, again? A hamster, a puppy –”

 

It had been a set of innocuous statements. Ryota had commented in much the same vein several times in their once-weekly messages.

 

Still, in the presence of their other friends, it echoed in the manner of a snapped violin string. Discordant.

 

Shintaro’s face darkened.

 

Atsushi, hulking off to the side, crunched very loudly on a bar of chocolate. “Are you stupid, Kise-chin?”

 

Ryota paled a little. Glanced at Seijuro apologetically. “Ah, well,” he said. “Let’s just play basketball. Until Kurokocchi gets here.”

 

“Where is Tetsu, anyway?” Daiki said. “He was the one who wanted to meet here, of all the damn places.”

 

“He said he had to take Nigo to the vet,” Ryota said.

 

“What the hell, let’s play without him. I bet you can’t beat me in a one-on-one, Kise.”

 

“Bring it on, Aominecchi!”

 

Seijuro looked around the empty sports hall.

 

Shintaro followed easily on from his gaze. “Kuroko said he didn't have a key to the locker room. We will have to leave our bags in a corner of the hall. The bags, and,” a twitch, “the tortoise.”

 

As their shoes squeaked over the smooth floors, and Daiki’s and Ryota’s voices floated in the spring-warm air, Seijuro reflected. Of course, only Ryota had forgiven him, whether or not Seijuro had required that forgiveness in the first place. The others had reconciled with each other and with Tetsuya. Tetsuya’s basketball had brought them outside themselves; allowed Ryota and Shintaro to trust their teammates, Daiki to savour defeat (its possibility), and Atsushi to understand those without talent. Seijuro had not completed the story pattern. Tetsuya had not, in defeating him, taught him the meaning, and the desirability, of loss. And therefore, Shintaro, Daiki, and Atsushi did not know how to act towards Seijuro. He was, in their eyes, an enemy among friends who, even now, were slowly learning, once again, the workings of a friendship they had once abandoned.

 

It was not as if it was a part he had attempted to decline. In fact, it could accurately be said that he had manufactured the role for himself.

 

To _lead_ the Generation of Miracles – or to be left behind.

 

It was not a choice he could not have made.

 

 

 

Tetsuya arrived five minutes into Daiki’s and Ryota’s second one-on-one. Shintaro instructed the splitting of the six of them into two teams, and they played several satisfying rounds over the next hour and a half.

 

Afterwards, on the way out from the hall, Tetsuya fell into step with Seijuro. He said, politely, “Akashi-kun, do you have a moment?”

 

Seijuro nodded. Motioned to Shintaro to go on ahead. They had planned to play a game of shogi at the stone shogi tables a few minutes away from the school.

 

It would very likely be a silent, awkward game. But Seijuro looked forward to it. A game with Shintaro in person instead of through their usual online site would be an edifying, and also nostalgic, affair.

 

“I wished to know,” Tetsuya said, when they were standing opposite each other behind the sports hall, “if Akashi-kun, as he is right now, is happy.”

 

The presumption. Even compared to Tetsuya’s usual arrogance – Seijuro lifted his head.

 

Tetsuya didn’t flinch. Another person would have, but Tetsuya had always been different. Not afraid of Seijuro so much as – disquieted. And then disappointed. Betrayed. The expression on his face, when told of the victory against Meiko; Seijuro remembered it.

 

“Our definitions of that word,” Seijuro said. “Differ greatly, Tetsuya.”

 

His former teammate took a deep breath. Shifted black sneakers over the dusty ground. His face was as bland as it always was. As Seijuro had taught him it should be, on the basketball court. Misdirection only worked if the opponent did not know what you were thinking. “At the Winter Cup, Nijimura-senpai said that he disapproved. Of my decision to win with my type of basketball.”

 

“And you wish for affirmation from me.”

 

“I don’t need your approval, Akashi-kun.” Simple, blunt.

 

“You achieved victory. With the help of your new light and your high school teammates. You are right; you do not need my approval. But know this, Tetsuya. The others may have been defeated. I will not be.”

 

His teammate was quiet.

 

Seijuro could hear Shintaro scrabbling around in the bottom of his bag. He would need another lettuce leaf in a moment. And Shintaro was waiting in the park. “If that was all you wished to speak about.”

 

“I would like to be friends with Akashi-kun. The same as when we were in Teiko.”

 

At the Winter Cup semi-finals, Shintaro had held his hand out to Seijuro. Seijuro had refused to take it. “That will not be possible.”

 

“Akashi-kun is afraid.”

 

“Our definitions of that word, it seems, also differ greatly.”

 

Tetsuya’s gaze drifted down. At this time of day, in Golden Week, the only discernible sounds from behind the sports hall were the distant, infrequent shouts of kids playing football in the field across from the school. The quiet, added to their location and the topic of conversation, made the edges of Seijuro’s temper fray further than Tetsuya’s insolence already had.

 

“Then,” Seijuro said. Curt. He moved to leave. 

 

“Wait.”

 

It was enough. Seijuro stood still, but he did not turn back. “The one who chose to meet at Teiko was Tetsuya. Just as it was Tetsuya who chose to defeat us. Just as it was Tetsuya who chose to run away, except when it came to Ogiwara Shigehiro.” He refused to tense, to turn and _look_. He had not looked for a long time. “It was I who failed the most. As your captain. As Akashi Seijuro. But it was not only my failure. And I will not apologize. I will not accept defeat, that you might prove to me that I am mistaken. Let me make it clear to you, Kuroko Tetsuya. I am myself. If, inconceivably, I am defeated by you at some point in the future, I will still, ultimately, win. A game may be played however many times is necessary.”

 

“I didn’t,” Tetsuya said, voice soft, “just want to win against Akashi-kun and the others.”

 

That only incensed Seijuro further. A slow-building anger, icy heat, that likely had as much or as little to do with Tetsuya as with Shuzo’s distance the night before and the events of the past week. This encroaching feeling – as with those final months at Teiko; encroaching, encroaching, and then swelling to a crescendo on that day when Tetsuya said to him: the finals, please take them seriously – 

 

Ogiwara Shigehiro. Tetsuya had sought to save him.

 

Seijuro did not permit himself to speak. At this moment, he would not be able to control his tongue.

 

“In a way, I understand Akashi-kun better now. At some point, I wanted to win because it was the only way to,” A pause. “Speak and be heard.”

 

Atsushi, looming over him. Victory, slipping from Seijuro’s grasp, at the same time as Daiki’s increasing disaffection, Shintaro’s burgeoning unease, Tetsuya’s deepening helplessness, and Ryota’s general confusion threatened to suffocate. All of Seijuro’s training in leadership, his natural intelligence and charisma – all of it, ineffective. And Atsushi, _challenging_ him.

 

“I wanted to play basketball as we used to. That was – that is all, Akashi-kun.”

 

It had all slipped, from Seijuro’s hands, through his fingers. A rope without knots. Without grip.

 

After the Inter-High, Rakuzan, Chihiro, Shuzo.

 

Chihiro had said, many weeks ago, in response to Seijuro’s ill-considered outburst, in frustration at the Generation of Miracles and Nijimura Shuzo: “Don’t try to win.” It had been ironically delivered advice.

 

Winning was necessary. Winning was a given. Akashi Seijuro would always win.

 

And yet, it was as Tetsuya had said. Seijuro had been – he was afraid.

 

The taste of the knowledge, metallic as blood in his mouth, was intolerable. The noon sun was high in the sky; its heat rested flat on Seijuro’s skin. Opened his eyes to the dust in the air. The waiting flinch in Tetsuya’s tightly-clenched fingers.

 

The world; it was bigger than this.

 

Seijuro couldn’t smile. But he softened his tone. Reached for – “We will play basketball again, Tetsuya. Perhaps another weekend before the Inter-High.”

 

It was off. Ambiguous. Tetsuya’s bright blue gaze shuttered, for a moment. And then he blinked. And nodded, his fingers unclenching and resting loosely against his sides. In the movement was a shadow of recognition.

 

The person he believed Seijuro had once been.

 

Seijuro could not be that person.

 

Tetsuya smiled. Small and fierce. “I look forward to it, Akashi-kun.”

 

 

 

“So, yeah,” Hayama’s voice said over the phone, “One of my middle-school teammates knew Mochida’s older brother, so Mochida’s older brother made the kid go to Nijimura and apologize. Don’t know how well that went, but it doesn’t matter, really. I heard from Akane-chan over in Class 3-4 that the new rumour’s going around school is about the vice-president of the student council being hot for the swim captain.”

 

Chihiro contemplated the manga on the floor in front of him. The warm, carpeted open space of his bedroom around him. And the phone in his hand, pressed to his ear. “How, the, fuck, do you have this number?”

 

Stupid question.

 

“Reo-nee!” Hayama crowed, half-happiness, half-bitter revenge, Chihiro was sure. “He has all of our numbers. Got them off Akashi, when Akashi was feeling generous.”

 

Chihiro gritted his teeth.

 

“And I’m calling you because I knew you’d want to know. About the whole thing with Mochida. Your little temper tantrum the other day –”

 

“Temper – ”

 

“Temper tantrum. Wasn’t convincing. We all know that actually – ”

 

“Temper – ”

 

“ _Actually_. You really care about Akashi. And the team.”

 

Chihiro removed the phone from his ear. Moved his thumb over the screen.

 

Hayama’s voice raised. At the same time, became serious. “And before you hang up, you should know, Yamada quit the club yesterday.”

 

“What.”

 

“He handed his resignation into to Reo-nee. Over the phone. Can’t do that obviously, the coaches’ll want documents and stuff, but, I mean –”

 

Chihiro was on his feet. And then hopping on one foot; he had stubbed a toe on the way up. Pain mixed with fury. He cursed, too loud and sharp.

 

Hayama paused. Fabric shifted. A phone cord dragged over a hard surface. “Mayuzumi?”

 

Hanging up was satisfying. The echoing, empty, empty ringtone.

 

Chihiro held on tight to the phone in his hand.

 

 

 

Shuzo’s sister had left for training camp in the morning. His younger brother was still holed up in his bedroom. It was a good time, if any, to find Kaa-san in the kitchen – where she always was – and speak to her.

 

He focused on clarity, on rationality. Stopped in the archway to the kitchen. He would just deal with this one thing. And then he would call Tatsuya and ask for a quick evening pick-up game. He owed his friend anyway, after the dismal way he’d played on Saturday.

 

One thing at a time.

 

“Kaa-san,” he said.

 

His mother didn’t flinch. She looked up from her laptop. Another company presentation. Or, maybe, Shuzo thought less charitably, Minesweeper. “Shuzo.”

 

Direct. Blunt. He wasn’t going to beat around the bush. He wasn’t going to run from it. Not anymore. “I’m going to stop.”

 

The house was larger than their previous one had been. Kaa-san had been promoted, shortly after Tou-san died. And without the need to pay medical bills anymore –

 

It wasn’t as if the space was filled with nothing but silence. There was the wind, strong since the early afternoon, pushing against the kitchen windows. There was the sound of a kid laughing, in the street outside. Another kid responding, much less amused. There was the soft music playing on Kaa-san’s laptop. Because, like Kou, she couldn’t work without listening to some album or another.

 

The space between him and Sei, the night before, as they lay on Shuzo’s bed together – it had been wider than usual, quieter than usual; but it had not been like this.

 

“I don’t understand what you mean, Shuzo,” his mother said.

 

“I’m going to stop,” Shuzo repeated, stronger. “I don’t regret what I did. I chose what I thought was best. And in doing –” he gestured vaguely, berated himself silently for the uselessness of the action; it left him open, might let her believe she could interject, “ – whatever this is, I’ve been irresponsible.”

 

Sei would have put it more eloquently.

 

His mother’s face was tight. She began to speak.

 

Shuzo said, before she could, “So I’m done, Kaa-san.”

 

Sachi’s voice, cold. Kou’s face, half-dark with shadow.

 

Sei, expression blank, at Teiko. Saying: it hasn’t been decided yet. And two years later – my father believes it best, to expect only what should be expected.

 

Kaa-san lifted her head.

 

The window to their right rattled on its hinges. The sound of the wind was full and hollow.

 

The world; it was bigger than this.

 

Shuzo couldn’t smile. “You win.”

 

 

 

The bus carrying the first string of Rakuzan’s basketball team left from a designated bus station in Tokyo on Tuesday morning.

 

After Seijuro had finished with his brief conversation with the coaches at the front of the vehicle, he saw Shuzo lift a hand, gesture him to the empty seat beside him. “We need to talk.”

 

Seijuro paused.  

 

“Yes, here. I just need to say something quick.”

 

At the back of the bus, Kotaro’s voice was floating, brightly, in the close air. Chattering to Reo about skateboarding over the weekend, and the upcoming practice match with Seirin. At least some of his enthusiasm, Seijuro suspected, was due to the fact that he was dating Seirin’s point guard, Izuki Shun.

 

Reo was responding, infrequently, in a lower register.

 

Eikichi was digging into the first of many hamburgers.

 

And Chihiro, who had been unusually terse when Seijuro saw him earlier at the bus station, and who had responded to Seijuro’s notification of Yamada Isamu’s resignation from the basketball club with a muttered, incomprehensible, “I give up. I fucking give up,” was pretending to be asleep in a seat two rows down from Shuzo.

 

Seijuro nodded at Shuzo to begin. At the same time, he braced one hand on the back of the chair in front of him, lifted his overnight bag into the compartment above the seats.

 

Shuzo said, flat, almost cold, “My mother is disowning me.”

 

Seijuro’s hand almost slipped. His glance at Shuzo was too quick.  

 

Shuzo smiled, his particular half-smile. “Sorry I didn’t tell you earlier.”

 

Kotaro laughed, from the back of the bus.

 

“Will you tell me, why you want – parameters for our relationship? Expectations, and shit like that.”

 

Seijuro’s ribs folded in on themselves. Narrowed his ability to breathe. And yet, his mind was as clear and deliberate as it had been on that day he spoke to Tetsuya, behind the sports hall where they had all once played basketball. “If you believe that this is an exchange – ”

 

“Like I said two months ago, Sei,” Shuzo said. Cutting. “When I tell you things, it’s because I want you to trust me. Not for an exchange. And I don’t pity you, or whatever messed-up scenario is playing out in your autocratic brain.” His gaze was directed out of the window. The long, broken line of the sidewalk as the bus moved down the road. They were still in the city centre. “I just want to know.”

 

Seijuro had attempted to explain twice already. Shuzo had misunderstood both times.

 

It was – difficult – to consider how to explain it again.  

 

Father, Seijuro could not say, looked at Yuuto-oji-san as if he loved him. And yet Yuuto-oji-san had disappeared for fifteen years, and Seijuro’s father, though he had mellowed, become softer, was still Akashi Masaomi, a distant man who could not look at Seijuro without seeing either his dead wife or the family heir.

 

Seijuro’s parents had not cared for each other, in the end. 

 

And Seijuro himself; he had won that match against Atsushi, thoroughly, completely.

 

The wind had been strong since the early afternoon of the day before. The news broadcasts had warned of a potential storm.

 

Air pushed against the window. Shuzo turned his head. His eyes were grey in the morning light. He said, although Seijuro had spoken no word, given no indication, “I can’t promise you anything.”

 

Seijuro did not allow his expression to flicker. “I did not ask – ”

 

“You didn’t ask, but sometimes,” a breath of laughter, “you’re transparent, Sei. If I had been looking – but I stopped looking, a while ago.”

 

A sharp, icy retort rested on Seijuro’s tongue. In a moment – 

 

Another person would have looked away. Shuzo did not. "I can’t promise you anything,” he said, again. “But I love you. Is that enough?”

 

A simple, direct statement. As simple as Shuzo’s second confession, two months ago. The edge in it; instead of distrustful, was brittle.

 

Through the window, the view of the sidewalk was clear and ordinary. People walking, cars passing by. There was no highway, no place where the ground made way for the sky, and the world opened.

 

Seijuro was himself. To think otherwise had always been an insult, to both himself and to Shuzo.

 

This choice, to lead or to be left behind, to seize or to abandon – it was one he would make. As many times as necessary.

 

Shuzo’s hand, in his, was familiar. The outline of his fingers, equally so. Seijuro turned it over, pressed a kiss to the open palm.

 

Shuzo made a spluttering sound.

 

One of the coaches shouted from the front of the bus, “Hayama, sit back down, right now!”

 

Grey eyes narrowed. Shuzo’s hand tensed.

 

Kotaro squeaked. “Reo-nee, I can _sense_ it. The murderous intent.”

 

“You deserve it, Kotaro,” said Reo.

 

Eikichi laughed, a boom.

 

Chihiro: “Shut up. All of you. Just shut up.”

 

Shuzo moved to stand.

 

Seijuro tightened his grip. And said, easily, “I love you, Shuzo.” The wind had quietened. Shuzo’s fingers closed over his. “Conditions are unnecessary.” 


End file.
